Turn your ES5 code into readable ES6 | Hacker News Reader

Turn your ES5 code into readable ES6

github.com

92 pointsmohebifar27 comments

I have started a similar project, but stopped working on it, and seeing this I decided to put it on GitHub, even though it's not very well tested and not feature complete.

The most complex feature in my code is the ability to turn var into let/const optimally using an esgraph-based dataflow analysis, and it also has the ability to introduce arrow functions, shorthand/method properties and classes.

It is implemented as a fork of Babel with slightly changed packaging and a bunch of ES5-to-ES6 passes.

I'm not sure if I'm going to do any further work on this, so feel free to incorporate the code into your project if you find it useful or start maintaining a fork.

It has been tested a bit but as much as it should, so it may not just work out of the box.

You can find it at https://github.com/luca-barbieri/5to6

That's great! It's kind of you. I will use that.

There's also this one https://github.com/mping/5to6

Yes, And it's 3 days younger than xto6. It does not support function/prototype => classes. And also it is trying to encourage people to convert their ES5 codes into ES6 but it's implemented in ES5 itself !

Don't take it as an attack, it's always better to have more choices and approaches to learn from, nobody is trying to diminish your work.

Sorry, You're right.

Interesting idea, but the backwards compatibility of ES6 means that you can refactor a project piece by piece as you work on it - IMO that's a better approach.

Sure, but even just as a learning exercise it's fun to pass ES5 code through it, particularly for people not familiar with the new features in ES6.

It could definitely do with a list of supported/unsupported functionality.

Oh, for sure. It's a fascinating project!

I am asking as a poor JS developer - what are the benefits of this newer style?

Readable, and intuitive. The syntax is like a standard class (constructor, methods, getters, setters) you'd see in C or PHP.

What is the benefit of using classes rather than just bunch of functions, calling each other?

Often when you use a bunch of functions together, you end up passing the same arguments. Those arguments represent some kind of state that your pass around from functions to functions. Sometimes you might even add an argument to a function just to pass it over to another function. After a while you might get tired of changing your function signatures and it makes sense to group those common arguments into a single data structure that can be accessed by your bunch of functions working together. While you're at it you might as well put the functions in that data structure too, so you can see clearly how they relate to each other. That's basically what a class is for.

There are strong arguments for both, but if you're going to decide on classes, ES6 classes are preferable to ES5 style.

That's a big question, its usually a first year software engineering degree assignment. Its the question of object orientated programming vs procedural programming.

The main thing with having classes is about encapsulating functionality into objects which can be tested, reused and extended as a component in its own right.

C++, you mean. There are no classes in C.

Neat. How about translating "require" calls to "import" statements (and exports statements)?

i did that yesterday by hand with 3 find-replace-all regexes. it isn't that big a deal :-)

(that said, not all uses of require can be translated to import statements)

Hmm. How smart is it? Can it detect when some usage of prototypes is not class-like and not convert it to an ES6 class?

In case you said, it can discern non-class-like function as nothing is assigned to its prototype.

Bu on the whole I cannot really tell you how smart it is because it is in alpha stage. We need more users to test it.

ES6 will be nice when I can write it without the worry of a compilation stage. I still use MooTools on my personal projects. I don't care. I get shit done.

I think this is awesome just for the sake of doing it. I'm always impressed with how these kinds of projects are implemented.

Sadly I get an error "Cannot find module './block-statement.js"

I fixed it

good idea..what all features currently you are converting to ES6? Better list them in github...

upvoted. Damet garm amoo :D

Thank you. Kharabetam :D

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