Video: Gain Performance! Take Your Run Time to Build Time

Babel is a free and open-source JavaScript transpiler that allows developers to use the latest JavaScript features while maintaining compatibility with older browsers. It is related to build time optimization by enabling computationally heavy logic to be moved from runtime to build time.

To create a custom Babel plugin, define a main function that returns a visitor pattern object. Use this object to iterate over the AST nodes of your code, modifying them as needed based on your configuration, such as converting shorthand styles to full CSS properties.

AST, or Abstract Syntax Tree, is a tree representation of the structure of your code. Babel uses it to process and transform JavaScript code by iterating over its nodes.

Babel allows developers to use the latest JavaScript features for cleaner and more efficient code, maintain browser compatibility, and move computationally heavy logic from runtime to build time, enhancing performance.

Rohit recommends using astexplorer.net for building Babel plugins and refers to Babel's documentation and a Babel plugin handbook for further learning. He also suggests checking out Webpack docs for understanding bundlers.

The new React compiler signifies a major development and a shift towards build time optimizations within the React ecosystem, highlighting the industry's focus on improving performance and efficiency.

Before his current role at Tria, Rohit worked on projects like API Weeks, a tool for watching, testing, and documenting APIs, and NativeBase V3, which faced performance issues leading to the creation of GlueStack Style and GlueStack UI.

Rohit's talk focuses on how to gain performance by shifting from runtime to build time optimizations in front-end development, particularly using tools like Babel.

Build time optimization is a process that improves application performance by offloading heavy computations to the build time, reducing runtime workload, allowing for earlier error detection, smaller bundle sizes, and more predictable software behavior.

Libraries are shifting towards build time optimization to enhance performance and efficiency by offloading computations to the build phase, which results in smoother and faster user experiences and allows for smaller bundle sizes and error detection before runtime.