Ben Vinegar: Source maps through the looking glass | JSConf EU 2017
Every voice is named by two or more agreeing sources.
“JavaScript has become the assembly language of the web.”
Ben likens JavaScript to low‑level assembly code for the web.
“I have experimented with trying to debug compiled applications”
He shares his difficulty debugging compiled code using raw assembly.
“source maps are pretty much just a JSON file”
Source maps consist of a simple JSON document.
“but I think it was dated around 2009”
The first source‑map specification appeared around 2009.
“it's totally normal for them to be megabytes in size we've seen source maps as large as 30 megabytes”
Source maps can be very large, up to around 30 MB.
“version 3 is the latest thing from 2011”
The current source‑map spec version is 3, released in 2011.
“the good news is that you don't really ever need”
He reassures that you don't need to understand all the internals of source maps to benefit from them.
“I recommend using this library”
He suggests using the source‑map NPM library to look up mappings yourself.
“you should be using them.”
He urges developers to start using source maps if they aren't already.