I never quite figure out how to use Babel so here it goes as best as I am able to describe. From what I understand, Babel is basically a JavaScript Compiler/Transpiler. It's basically so that the code you wrote runs in older browsers.

Babel 5 prior to 2015, required babel-core and packages were not namespaced like @babel It also used preset packages like babel-preset-*.

Babel 6 in 2015, started to change things and needed .babelrc

Babel 7 you can use .babelrc.js or babel.config.js and packages are namespaced/scoped as @babel. This now uses @babel/preset-env

.babelrc is json only and only used with Babel 5

.babelrc.js and babel.config.js need to have module.exports = { . . . }; syntax.