[jongjong]

This article is spot on. As a developer, I don't want to see the build step. As soon as you expose the mechanics of the build and transpilation process to developers, you add a ton of complexity; for example, it opens up the possibility of transpiler and JS engine version incompatibilities. Devs should only need to concern themselves with one number; the version of the engine which runs their code. If they need to worry about the engine version and the transpiler version separately, it makes code less portable because you can't just say "This library runs on Node.js version x.x." It sucks to come across a library which works on your engine version but relies on a newer version of TypeScript... It's like hoping for the planets to align sometimes.