What are source maps and why should you care?
In modern web development, we use many languages on a daily basis. At the frontend especially, many of these languages aren't as terse as we would like. For example, JavaScript and CSS both have similar drawbacks. Both can have odd, non-intuitive behavior which can catch almost every developer out at some point. Both have times where new features are in limbo due to slow browser support for much-desired features. Both benefit from minification to reduce the final file size(s), and both can be a nightmare to manage as the codebase grows and as multiple developers get their idle hands on the code. For these reasons, JS/CSS transpilers and preprocessors came about.
The goals of these preprocessors are always the same:
Abstract away the difficult or verbose syntax in favor of terse, clean, intuitive syntax
Reduce common repetition in writing the language
Offer immediate use of new features for the underlying language, minification and easy management...
