Babel

Babel transpiled modern JavaScript to run in older browsers. Browsers caught up, and TypeScript replaced the need for most Babel plugins — JSX transforms, optional chaining, nullish coalescing, and class properties are all handled natively now.

Vite, Bun, and esbuild all compile TypeScript and JSX without Babel, orders of magnitude faster. The plugin ecosystem that once justified Babel's existence has shrunk to niche use cases. If Babel is still in your build chain, it's adding seconds of build time for no practical benefit.