Babel vs Visual Studio Code

Overview

Babel

Stacks27.3K

Followers11.0K

Votes391

GitHub Stars43.8K

Forks5.8K

Visual Studio Code

Stacks186.5K

Followers169.1K

Votes2.3K

GitHub Stars178.2K

Forks35.9K

Babel vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Key difference 1: Babel - JavaScript Compiler: Babel is a JavaScript compiler that allows developers to write code in the latest version of JavaScript and convert it into a backward-compatible version that can run on older browsers. It enables the use of modern JavaScript syntax and features, such as arrow functions, classes, modules, and more, by transpiling them into equivalent code compatible with older environments. Visual Studio Code (VS Code), on the other hand, is a source code editor that provides a rich set of editing capabilities and developer tools, but it does not directly deal with JavaScript transpilation or compilation.
Key difference 2: Babel - Language Transformation: Babel primarily focuses on transforming JavaScript code from one version to another, whereas Visual Studio Code is a general-purpose code editor that supports multiple programming languages and provides a wide range of features like syntax highlighting, code completion, debugging, source control integration, and more. While Babel is specifically designed for JavaScript transformation purposes, Visual Studio Code offers a comprehensive development environment for various programming languages.
Key difference 3: Babel - Plugin Ecosystem: Babel offers a plugin ecosystem that allows developers to extend its functionality and customize the transformation process according to their requirements. There are numerous plugins available for Babel that provide additional features, syntax support, and integration with other tools. In contrast, Visual Studio Code does not have a dedicated plugin system for modifying its core behavior, but it does offer a rich extension marketplace where developers can find extensions to enhance its functionality and support specific programming languages.
Key difference 4: Visual Studio Code - Integrated Development Environment (IDE): Visual Studio Code serves as a full-fledged integrated development environment (IDE) that combines various tools, features, and extensions to provide an all-in-one development experience. It includes built-in debugging capabilities, integrated terminal, version control support, task automation, and more. Babel, on the other hand, focuses solely on transforming JavaScript code and does not provide a comprehensive IDE-like environment for development.
Key difference 5: Visual Studio Code - Multi-language Support: Visual Studio Code supports a wide range of programming languages and provides language-specific features like IntelliSense, debugging, and code formatting for each supported language. This makes it suitable for developers working on projects involving multiple programming languages or frameworks. Babel, being primarily focused on JavaScript transformation, does not offer explicit support for languages other than JavaScript.
Key difference 6: Babel - Extensive Configurability: Babel provides extensive configuration options to fine-tune its transformation process, allowing developers to specify which plugins or presets to use, customize the output format, enable or disable specific transformations, and more. This gives developers greater control over how their JavaScript code is transpiled. Visual Studio Code, although highly customizable in terms of editor settings, does not offer the same level of granularity in configuring the JavaScript transformation process.

In summary, Babel is a JavaScript compiler that specializes in transforming JavaScript code between different versions and offers an extensive plugin ecosystem, while Visual Studio Code is a feature-rich code editor with support for multiple programming languages, providing an integrated development environment experience.

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Advice on Babel, Visual Studio Code

Kamaleshwar

Software Engineer at Dibiz Pte. Ltd.

Jul 8, 2020

Decided

Visual Studio Code became famous over the past 3+ years I believe. The clean UI, easy to use UX and the plethora of integrations made it a very easy decision for us. Our gripe with Sublime was probably only the UX side. VSCode has not failed us till now, and still is able to support our development env without any significant effort.

Goland being paid, as well as built only for Go seemed like a significant limitation to not consider it.

1.36M views1.36M

Comments

Simon

Student at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Jan 9, 2020

Decided

I decided to choose VSCode over Sublime text for my Systems Programming class in C. What I love about VSCode is its awesome ability to add extensions. Intellisense is a beautiful debugger, and Remote SSH allows me to login and make real-time changes in VSCode to files on my university server. This is an awesome alternative to going back and forth on pushing/pulling code and logging into servers in the terminal. Great choice for anyone interested in C programming!

1.29M views1.29M

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Babel	Visual Studio Code
Babel will turn your ES6+ code into ES5 friendly code, so you can start using it right now without waiting for browser support.	Build and debug modern web and cloud applications. Code is free and available on your favorite platform - Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.
Array comprehensions; Arrow functions; Async functions; Async generator functions; Classes; Class properties; Computed property names; Constants; Decorators; Default parameters; Destructuring; Exponentiation operator; For-of; Generators; Generator comprehensions; Let scoping; Modules; Module export extensions; Object rest/spread; Property method assignment; Property name shorthand; Rest parameters; React; Spread; Tail call optimisation; Template literals; Type annotations; Unicode regex; JSX; React; Flow; Node.js; Meteor; Rails; Broccoli; Browserify; Require.js; Brunch; Duo; Gobble; Grunt; Gulp; Make; Webpack; Connect; Jade; Jest; Karma; Mocha; Nodemon	Combines UI of a modern editor with code assistance and navigation; Integrated debugging experience
Statistics
GitHub Stars 43.8K	GitHub Stars 178.2K
GitHub Forks 5.8K	GitHub Forks 35.9K
Stacks 27.3K	Stacks 186.5K
Followers 11.0K	Followers 169.1K
Votes 391	Votes 2.3K
Pros & Cons
Pros 165 Modern Javascript works with all browsers 77 Open source 60 Integration with lots of tools 56 Easy setup 26 Very active on github	Pros 341 Powerful multilanguage IDE 310 Fast 194 Front-end develop out of the box 158 Support TypeScript IntelliSense 142 Very basic but free Cons 46 Slow startup 29 Resource hog at times 20 Poor refactoring 14 Poor UI Designer 11 Weak Ui design tools
Integrations
Grunt Broccoli Browserify Brunch Duo gulp RequireJS	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Babel, Visual Studio Code?

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is available for OS X, Windows and Linux. One license is all you need to use Sublime Text on every computer you own, no matter what operating system it uses. Sublime Text uses a custom UI toolkit, optimized for speed and beauty, while taking advantage of native functionality on each platform.

Atom

At GitHub, we're building the text editor we've always wanted. A tool you can customize to do anything, but also use productively on the first day without ever touching a config file. Atom is modern, approachable, and hackable to the core. We can't wait to see what you build with it.

Vim

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor 'Vi', with a more complete feature set. Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free (as in "free speech" and also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. Running in the MS Windows environment, its use is governed by GPL License.

Emacs

GNU Emacs is an extensible, customizable text editor—and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing.

Brackets

With focused visual tools and preprocessor support, it is a modern text editor that makes it easy to design in the browser.

Neovim

Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to: simplify maintenance and encourage contributions, split the work between multiple developers, enable the implementation of new/modern user interfaces without any modifications to the core source, and improve extensibility with a new plugin architecture.

VSCodium

It is a community-driven, freely-licensed binary distribution of Microsoft’s editor VSCode.

TextMate

TextMate brings Apple's approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.

gedit

gedit is the GNOME text editor. While aiming at simplicity and ease of use, gedit is a powerful general purpose text editor.

Related Comparisons

Babel vs Visual Studio Code: What are the differences?

Key difference 1: Babel - JavaScript Compiler: Babel is a JavaScript compiler that allows developers to write code in the latest version of JavaScript and convert it into a backward-compatible version that can run on older browsers. It enables the use of modern JavaScript syntax and features, such as arrow functions, classes, modules, and more, by transpiling them into equivalent code compatible with older environments. Visual Studio Code (VS Code), on the other hand, is a source code editor that provides a rich set of editing capabilities and developer tools, but it does not directly deal with JavaScript transpilation or compilation.
Key difference 2: Babel - Language Transformation: Babel primarily focuses on transforming JavaScript code from one version to another, whereas Visual Studio Code is a general-purpose code editor that supports multiple programming languages and provides a wide range of features like syntax highlighting, code completion, debugging, source control integration, and more. While Babel is specifically designed for JavaScript transformation purposes, Visual Studio Code offers a comprehensive development environment for various programming languages.
Key difference 3: Babel - Plugin Ecosystem: Babel offers a plugin ecosystem that allows developers to extend its functionality and customize the transformation process according to their requirements. There are numerous plugins available for Babel that provide additional features, syntax support, and integration with other tools. In contrast, Visual Studio Code does not have a dedicated plugin system for modifying its core behavior, but it does offer a rich extension marketplace where developers can find extensions to enhance its functionality and support specific programming languages.
Key difference 4: Visual Studio Code - Integrated Development Environment (IDE): Visual Studio Code serves as a full-fledged integrated development environment (IDE) that combines various tools, features, and extensions to provide an all-in-one development experience. It includes built-in debugging capabilities, integrated terminal, version control support, task automation, and more. Babel, on the other hand, focuses solely on transforming JavaScript code and does not provide a comprehensive IDE-like environment for development.
Key difference 5: Visual Studio Code - Multi-language Support: Visual Studio Code supports a wide range of programming languages and provides language-specific features like IntelliSense, debugging, and code formatting for each supported language. This makes it suitable for developers working on projects involving multiple programming languages or frameworks. Babel, being primarily focused on JavaScript transformation, does not offer explicit support for languages other than JavaScript.
Key difference 6: Babel - Extensive Configurability: Babel provides extensive configuration options to fine-tune its transformation process, allowing developers to specify which plugins or presets to use, customize the output format, enable or disable specific transformations, and more. This gives developers greater control over how their JavaScript code is transpiled. Visual Studio Code, although highly customizable in terms of editor settings, does not offer the same level of granularity in configuring the JavaScript transformation process.

Babel vs Visual Studio Code

Overview