6 ms·

It's pretty wild having seen CoffeeScript spread like a wildfire in the early 2010s, only to be discarded nearly as fast a couple years later.

ars 9y ago
It validates my policy of not jumping on every new thing. I loose "nerd cred" for it, but it's better for my clients that way.
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  The only bandwagon I've ever witnessed explicitly was this "I'll lose nerd points for being so anti establishment" thing, that's been going around forever. I loose "nerd cred" for it. Please. Give me a break. Half the people here will fall over themselves agreeing with you and you know it. Heck, I agree with you. Can we please, as a community, get over ourselves? Can we get over this "ermegerd I'm not gonna use the latest JS framework! Guess that makes me 'not cool'! Haha I'm so level headed teehee guiltyyy!" We get it! Most people, the silent majority, don't use new things. We know! We are them. It's ok. Stop. dont humblebrag about how productive you are on Procrastination News. I've never been on Tumblr but I imagine this is what some of it is like. Sorry for singling you out. It's just a bugbear, is all. You're probably a solid guy / girl and I do believe you deliver great value for your clients. Honestly.
  - ars 9y ago
    I've been criticized (by other programmers!) for not going for the latest and newest stuff, so I'm a bit sensitive and glad to have some confirmation that I'm right. I'm not trying to brag (didn't even realize it could be read that way), I'm trying to validate both myself and other people like me.
  - arvinsim 9y ago
    I would guess that nerd cred is not the reason for most people. It's about competitive advantage. Some people just want an edge over other people in their career. Some don't want to miss the "next best thing". Some people just want to be stay relevant and be employed.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    dont humblebrag about how productive you are on Procrastination News. Haha that should be written across the header on the main page.
k__ 9y ago
Yes, I had the feeling this had to do with the rise of Nodejs. Back in 2010 I was mostly a PHP dev and some Nodejs devs told me how cool and better it is and that there is CoffeeScript, which is also much better than JavaScript and PHP combined. I also started a JS project in 2015 were the lead dev started 3 months before me with... CS! But he rewrote most of it in ES2015.
- draw_down 9y ago
  Wait, why were node devs talking about Coffeescript? Weird.
  - spraak 9y ago
    You can write CoffeeScript to target Node...
    - pcr0 9y ago
      The question is, why? Realistically, everybody who uses Coffeescript is/was a Rails developer at some point since the syntax is very opinionated towards rubyists. The typical Node dev is more likely to use ES6/7 which fixes a lot of the same js issues as Coffeescript.
      - alanh 9y ago
        what a facile interpretation. CoffeeScript offered a large number of meaningful improvements over ES5, not including superficial syntax differences. It _still_ offers truly meaningful niceties that can make code _better_ than the JavaScript equivalent.
      - k__ 9y ago
        As far as I can tell, much of the ES6 changes came from people who were using CoffeeScript before.
draw_down 9y ago
I'd say you could see this coming as soon as it emerged. People didn't want to learn yucky JavaScript syntax, then they learned it anyway because that's always how this happens, and now here we are. Whole technologies have been invented simply so that devs can avoid learning or touching JS. Once upon a time, I was one of them.
s_kilk 9y ago
Same, the JS cool-kids swore up-and-down that CoffeeScript was the future and we'd be fools to not jump on. It's another reminder that no-one knows the future.
- treehau5 9y ago
  CoffeeScript always felt forced onto me during the height of 37Signal's influence of software development trends at the time. At the only rails shop I ever worked at it was heavily resisted. It was at the same time I was reading more and more of Resig blogs and books (Secrets of the JavaScript ninja) and I really began to learn and grok just plain normal JavaScript. I said to myself, "you know, this really isn't that bad" Haven't looked back since. I hate the direction ES is going.
  - mercer 9y ago
    What do you dislike about ES' direction? The increase in language features in general, or more specific things?
    - treehau5 9y ago
      Increase in features yes and the continual succumbing to developers who just can't seem to think outside the strict OO paradigm. Prototypical inheritance is really not that hard to understand. I would rather see JavaScript fix the existing functionality, such as sometimes the prototype chain not being correctly established when instantiating a new object.
- draw_down 9y ago
  Mmm, from my view it was driven more by Rubyists who disliked that JS was much uglier than their chosen language. JS devs just write JS, because they know it already.
- alanh 9y ago
  It was the future… so many CoffeeScript niceties (spread operators, destructured assignment, class syntax, ARROW FUNCTIONS) were subsequently mainlined into ES6.
nemild 9y ago
I can relate. I wrote an essay on this a while back: https://www.nemil.com/musings/shinyandnew.html https://www.nemil.com/musings/shinyandnew.html Excerpt: Pity the modern web or mobile app developer on Hacker News. As a full stack startup developer in 2012, you were building websites using Ruby/Rails on the backend, Backbone/Coffeescript/Underscore on the frontend, while deploying your app with Capistrano (or the relevant Python analog). By 2013, you'd transitioned to Node/Express/Mongo on the backend, Grunt/Ember on the frontend. In 2014, you'd switched whole hog over to the MEAN stack (now with promises), but experimented with Koa and considered a shift to Go (after the Express core contributor made the jump). In 2015, you're using Gulp/ES2015/React on the front end, Express/Go on the backend, React Native over the native mobile languages, and slowly transitioning your system over to microservices with Docker. Soon, you'll be transitioning to Phoenix, figuring out if Angular 2 is the right choice - and maybe even plotting a world where Go can work on Android and where an open sourced Swift might fit into your stack. (I’m clearly exaggerating for effect, though this is a fair representation of what is popular in HN headlines)
- katzgrau 9y ago
  One minor upside to the rapid change is that I can sit out an entire stack and hop back into relevancy with some totally new stack a year later.
- twhb 9y ago
  I'm not sure HN headlines - even ones like "we rewrote our codebase with X" - indicate that people are actually rotating libraries quickly. Rather, they indicate our quickly-shifting curiosity, and cherry-pick instances of people actually acting on it because they're interesting. Tellingly, the "rewrite" blog posts usually are coming not from the fad preceding the current, but something much older.

ars 9y ago

It validates my policy of not jumping on every new thing. I loose "nerd cred" for it, but it's better for my clients that way.

nothrabannosir 9y ago
The only bandwagon I've ever witnessed explicitly was this "I'll lose nerd points for being so anti establishment" thing, that's been going around forever. I loose "nerd cred" for it. Please. Give me a break. Half the people here will fall over themselves agreeing with you and you know it. Heck, I agree with you. Can we please, as a community, get over ourselves? Can we get over this "ermegerd I'm not gonna use the latest JS framework! Guess that makes me 'not cool'! Haha I'm so level headed teehee guiltyyy!" We get it! Most people, the silent majority, don't use new things. We know! We are them. It's ok. Stop. dont humblebrag about how productive you are on Procrastination News. I've never been on Tumblr but I imagine this is what some of it is like. Sorry for singling you out. It's just a bugbear, is all. You're probably a solid guy / girl and I do believe you deliver great value for your clients. Honestly.
- ars 9y ago
  I've been criticized (by other programmers!) for not going for the latest and newest stuff, so I'm a bit sensitive and glad to have some confirmation that I'm right. I'm not trying to brag (didn't even realize it could be read that way), I'm trying to validate both myself and other people like me.
- arvinsim 9y ago
  I would guess that nerd cred is not the reason for most people. It's about competitive advantage. Some people just want an edge over other people in their career. Some don't want to miss the "next best thing". Some people just want to be stay relevant and be employed.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  dont humblebrag about how productive you are on Procrastination News. Haha that should be written across the header on the main page.

k__ 9y ago

Yes, I had the feeling this had to do with the rise of Nodejs. Back in 2010 I was mostly a PHP dev and some Nodejs devs told me how cool and better it is and that there is CoffeeScript, which is also much better than JavaScript and PHP combined. I also started a JS project in 2015 were the lead dev started 3 months before me with... CS! But he rewrote most of it in ES2015.

draw_down 9y ago
Wait, why were node devs talking about Coffeescript? Weird.
- spraak 9y ago
  You can write CoffeeScript to target Node...
  - pcr0 9y ago
    The question is, why? Realistically, everybody who uses Coffeescript is/was a Rails developer at some point since the syntax is very opinionated towards rubyists. The typical Node dev is more likely to use ES6/7 which fixes a lot of the same js issues as Coffeescript.
    - alanh 9y ago
      what a facile interpretation. CoffeeScript offered a large number of meaningful improvements over ES5, not including superficial syntax differences. It _still_ offers truly meaningful niceties that can make code _better_ than the JavaScript equivalent.
    - k__ 9y ago
      As far as I can tell, much of the ES6 changes came from people who were using CoffeeScript before.

draw_down 9y ago

I'd say you could see this coming as soon as it emerged. People didn't want to learn yucky JavaScript syntax, then they learned it anyway because that's always how this happens, and now here we are. Whole technologies have been invented simply so that devs can avoid learning or touching JS. Once upon a time, I was one of them.

s_kilk 9y ago

Same, the JS cool-kids swore up-and-down that CoffeeScript was the future and we'd be fools to not jump on. It's another reminder that no-one knows the future.

treehau5 9y ago
CoffeeScript always felt forced onto me during the height of 37Signal's influence of software development trends at the time. At the only rails shop I ever worked at it was heavily resisted. It was at the same time I was reading more and more of Resig blogs and books (Secrets of the JavaScript ninja) and I really began to learn and grok just plain normal JavaScript. I said to myself, "you know, this really isn't that bad" Haven't looked back since. I hate the direction ES is going.
- mercer 9y ago
  What do you dislike about ES' direction? The increase in language features in general, or more specific things?
  - treehau5 9y ago
    Increase in features yes and the continual succumbing to developers who just can't seem to think outside the strict OO paradigm. Prototypical inheritance is really not that hard to understand. I would rather see JavaScript fix the existing functionality, such as sometimes the prototype chain not being correctly established when instantiating a new object.
draw_down 9y ago
Mmm, from my view it was driven more by Rubyists who disliked that JS was much uglier than their chosen language. JS devs just write JS, because they know it already.
alanh 9y ago
It was the future… so many CoffeeScript niceties (spread operators, destructured assignment, class syntax, ARROW FUNCTIONS) were subsequently mainlined into ES6.

nemild 9y ago

I can relate. I wrote an essay on this a while back: https://www.nemil.com/musings/shinyandnew.html https://www.nemil.com/musings/shinyandnew.html Excerpt: Pity the modern web or mobile app developer on Hacker News. As a full stack startup developer in 2012, you were building websites using Ruby/Rails on the backend, Backbone/Coffeescript/Underscore on the frontend, while deploying your app with Capistrano (or the relevant Python analog). By 2013, you'd transitioned to Node/Express/Mongo on the backend, Grunt/Ember on the frontend. In 2014, you'd switched whole hog over to the MEAN stack (now with promises), but experimented with Koa and considered a shift to Go (after the Express core contributor made the jump). In 2015, you're using Gulp/ES2015/React on the front end, Express/Go on the backend, React Native over the native mobile languages, and slowly transitioning your system over to microservices with Docker. Soon, you'll be transitioning to Phoenix, figuring out if Angular 2 is the right choice - and maybe even plotting a world where Go can work on Android and where an open sourced Swift might fit into your stack. (I’m clearly exaggerating for effect, though this is a fair representation of what is popular in HN headlines)

katzgrau 9y ago
One minor upside to the rapid change is that I can sit out an entire stack and hop back into relevancy with some totally new stack a year later.
twhb 9y ago
I'm not sure HN headlines - even ones like "we rewrote our codebase with X" - indicate that people are actually rotating libraries quickly. Rather, they indicate our quickly-shifting curiosity, and cherry-pick instances of people actually acting on it because they're interesting. Tellingly, the "rewrite" blog posts usually are coming not from the fad preceding the current, but something much older.