JSJ 321: Babel and Open Source Software with Henry Zhu

Panel:

• Charles Max Wood
• Aimee Knight
• AJ ONeal
• Joe Eames

Special Guests: Henry ZhuIn this episode, the JavaScript Jabber panel talks to Henry Zhu about Babel and open source software. Henry is one of the maintainers on Babel, which is a JavaScript compiler, and recently left this job to work on doing open source full time as well as working on Babel. They talk about where Babel is today, what it actually is, and his focus on his open source career. They also touch on how he got started in open source, his first PR, and more!In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

• Henry intro
• Babel update
• Sebastian McKenzie was the original creator of Babel
• Has learned a lot about being a maintainer
• What is Babel?
• JavaScript compiler
• You never know who your user is
• Has much changed with Babel since Sebastian left?
• Working on open source
• How did you get started in pen source?
• The ability to learn a lot from open source
• Atrocities of globalization
• More decentralization from GitHub
• Gitea and GitLab
• Gitea installer
• Open source is more closed now
• His first PR
• JSCS
• Auto-fixing
• Prettier
• Learning more about linting
• You don’t have to have formal training to be successful
• Codefund.io
• Sustainability of open source
• And much, much more!

Links:

• Babel
• JavaScript
• Gitea
• GitLab
• Gitea installer
• Prettier
• Codefund.io
• @left_pad
• Henry’s GitHub
• henryzoo.com
• Henry’s Patreon

Sponsors

• Kendo UI
• Sentry
• Digital Ocean

Picks:Charles

• Orphan Black
• Crucial Accountability by Kerry Patterson

Aimee

• Desk with cubby holes for cats
• The Key to Good Luck Is an Open Mind blog post

AJ

• Gitea
• Gitea installer
• Greenlock

Joe

• Solo
• Justified

Henry

• Celeste
• Zeit Day talks

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