2015 brings with it the finalization of the ECMAScript 6 specification and with that the confidence to build modern, superior applications in JavaScript.
The current landscape of JavaScript frameworks is dominated by the recognizable giants AngularJS and React both of which are aiming in some way, shape or form, to incorporate new ES6 features into their paradigms.
There is however, another player that while new and relatively secretive, looks elegant in its use of modern JavaScript features. I'd like to take a moment to introduce you to Aurelia.
Aureli-who?
Aurelia is a next generation framework that leverages modern concepts like ES6, Web Components, and modularization to help you develop performant, futureproof applications.
Aurelia is the natural progression of Durandal, an AngularJS competitor built by Rob Eisenberg. Aurelia's history involves a number of encounters with the AngularJS team over the years. It's for this reason that many aspects of the framework might feel familiar to the AngularJS developers among you.
New Technologies
As I said, Aurelia is a "next generation" framework and as a consequence the tools it uses may be new to some of you. It runs on Node.js, and uses npm but it relies on a few cool new pieces of tech that we'll look at briefly below:
Gulp
This one isn't so new but it's a core part of Aurelia's setup. We'll use Gulp to pipe all our files through various tasks to ensure our application is all wired up and ready to go.
ES6 Module Loader Polyfill
The ES6 module loader is a pollyfill for the System dynamic module loader that was part of the original ES6 specification. The System loader is in the process of being written into browser specifications but in the meantime this polyfill provides a futureproof solution that we can use today.
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