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Using Babel to use experimental JavaScript features

The Babel transpiler (http://babeljs.io/) is a great way to use cutting-edge JavaScript features on older implementations. The word transpile means Babel rewrites JavaScript code into other JavaScript code, specifically to rewrite ES-2015 or ES-2016 features to older JavaScript code. Babel converts JavaScript source to an abstract syntax tree, then manipulates that tree to rewrite the code using older JavaScript features, and then writes that tree to a JavaScript source code file.

Put another way, Babel rewrites JavaScript code into JavaScript code, applying desired transformations such as converting ES2015/2016 features into ES5 code that can run in a web browser.

Many use Babel to experiment ...

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