CoffeeScript: JavaScript without the Fail (slides)

To be fair, one shouldn't bash Brendan, he had to build the initial JavaScript language in a week[1]. It's not his fault the language became the defacto web-language.<p>[1]<a href="http://www.jwz.org/blog/2010/10/every-day-i-learn-something-new-and-stupid/#comment-1021" rel="nofollow">http://www.jwz.org/blog/2010/10/every-day-i-learn-something-...</a>

Every time I'm left unconvinced, either by pointy-edged syntax or not fair representations of javascript...<p>Arrays could use a beard or the varied language syntax is going to cause ingrown pains:<p><pre><code> Declaring arrays In CoffeeScript: things_that_rule = [ "robot unicorns" "honey badgers" "Lord Inglip" ] Destructuring assignment Assign variables from inside arrays: sum_and_difference = (a, b) -&#62; [a + b, a - b] [sum, difference] = sum_and_difference 5, 2 </code></pre> It's also bizarre from a Python background:<p><pre><code> &#62;&#62;&#62; [ ... "a" ... "b" ... "c" ... ] ['abc'] </code></pre> =====<p><pre><code> if foo.bar? then console.log foo.bar # if (foo.bar != null) { ... } </code></pre> versus<p><pre><code> if(foo.bar){console.log(foo.bar);}</code></pre>

Out of interest, how does coffeescript scale, and can it start to get unreadable?<p>I worry the compression, while cute, could start to get a little extreme after a while, for example:<p>class Shape<p><pre><code> constructor: (@x, @y) -&#62; centre: -&#62; [ @x, @y ] area: -&#62; 0 </code></pre> is starting to look close to unreadable and overcompressed (in particular, the constructor implicitly declaring member variables).<p>Also having a quick look through the bug reports, there seems to be some interesting inconsistencies, such as:<p>x for x in [1,2,3] # x == 3<p>x for x in [1..3] # x == 4<p>I also see a complaint that:<p>foo bar: 'baz', quux('onoz')<p>Won't parse. I understand this should parse as:<p>foo({bar:'baz'}, quux('onoz'))<p>Both of these, and other little things I've seen, make me think coffeescript is more of a giant bag of good ideas, rather than a well-thought out language. In particular, is there a clear unambiguous grammar for it anywhere? I can't find one.

I hope this submission doesn't signal an era of meme-worship here on Hacker News. "Fail" may just be borderline, but it sure triggers my radar.<p>The flood of memes slid slowly in the back-door at reddit, one innocent step at a time. Questioning this often got you the comment that you were old, stiff and lacked the funny-gene. Time passed and look at what a worthless trollhole reddit eventually became.<p>I hope to see fewer submissions like this on HN in the future.

Does anyone else prefer the syntax of javascript to that of coffee script? Really, my only problems with javascript are no multi-line strings and type coercion (but type coercion issues are mitigated by always using ===). Otherwise, I think javascript is a fine language. Also, the with statement isn't that bad in my opinion.

The slides you can type in are quite annoying. I didn't find any way to continue other than clicking with my mouse.

The Hyperbole is strong with this one

Am I the only one who is amused by the irony of these guys?<p>i.e. "lets use Javascript end to end", and then the very same people go and create a new language to replace said Javascript?

There's still plenty of fail, just different kinds of fail.

Perhaps I'm missing the point here, but I don't get why there's such a hype over CoffeeScript. People seem to prefer learning a brand new language in order to avoid getting proficient in another language they already (should) know. Or in other words, people prefer to learn a language that will code another language for them. Its like I'll go and learn Japanese just so I can use it to write phonetic English.

The beard slide made me laugh, but it doesn't hold any water. Ryan Dahl is clean-shaven in the node.js intro video on their website. Also, I think Javascript is great. Its 'bloated' syntax makes for minimize-able files which can end up being half the size of the originals. That's just a preference thing.

I love the facial hair theory. LOL.

What's with the biased JS examples in the beginning?

Will I be able to use Coffeescript with frameworks like Node.js? If yes, then how so?

Sorry if I'm late to the game but I have to say I started using vim-coffeescript with coffeecompile on watch mode and it's wonderful. It's basically like the window on the homepage but in vim.

Why are the slides not using coffeescript?