Why set a React Component's state outside of the constructor? : <p>So I just downloaded source code from a React framework, and I'm getting this error in Terminal:</p>

<pre><code>  ERROR in ./src/components/TextEditor.js
  Module build failed: SyntaxError: Unexpected token (24:8)

  22 | 
  23 |   // Set the initial state when the app is first constructed.
&gt; 24 |   state = {
     |         ^
  25 |     state: initialState
  26 |   }
  27 | 
</code></pre>

<p>My question is, why do people set a React Component's state like this?  What's the benefit if it'll error for some people?  Also, is there a Babel preset or plugin I can get to prevent this error?</p>

<p>This is how I usually set a component's state, and from what I've seen, this is conventional:</p>

<pre><code>constructor() {
  super();
  this.state = {
    state: initialState
  };
}
</code></pre>

<p>For the record, this is the entire document:</p>

<pre><code>// Import React!
import React from 'react'
import {Editor, Raw} from 'slate'

const initialState = Raw.deserialize({
  nodes: [
    {
      kind: 'block',
      type: 'paragraph',
      nodes: [
        {
          kind: 'text',
          text: 'A line of text in a paragraph.'
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}, { terse: true })

// Define our app...
export default class TextEditor extends React.Component {

  // Set the initial state when the app is first constructed.
  state = {
    state: initialState
  }

  // On change, update the app's React state with the new editor state.
  render() {
    return (
      &lt;Editor
        state={this.state.state}
        onChange={state =&gt; this.setState({ state })}
      /&gt;
    )
  }

}
</code></pre>
