New features in ES6

Posted February 10, 2016

We started exploring the new features that rolled out in ES6. We’re using Babel, a JavaScript complier.

ES6 defines two new ways to store values, let and const. They are block scoped, so their scopes are only defined within {}.

Another new feature is the arrow notation. This is a new way to write functions. Arrow notation is less code to write and simpler. They are always anonymous and lexically bind this, which means that this will bind to the parent function.

You can use the arrow notation like this:

function myCalc(){
  this.total = 0;
  let someArr = [1,2,3,4];

  someArr.forEach((item) => {
    this.total += item;
    });
  }

The feature that I’m most excited about is the for...of loop. This loop will iterate of “iterable objects” (MDN), which means that we can use it for objects and arrays. Before, we could only use the for...in loop to loop through objects.

I know there are more to explore, but for now, these are the features I’m most excited about!

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