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I never understood the need for CoffeeScript. I especially don't understand why someone would want it now. Compilation of JavaScript is a terrible idea. I have
by jondubois 9y ago
I never understood the need for CoffeeScript. I especially don't understand why someone would want it now.
Compilation of JavaScript is a terrible idea. I have worked with loads of different compile to JS languages. The compile step is a huge pain. The language has to be much much much better than JS for it to be worthwhile. I think that even JSX or TypeScript don't cut it... Close but still not worth the hassle! I used CoffeeScript for 6 months, it was a very lucrative contract but I had to quit in part because I really didn't like CoffeeScript.
What I love in a language is simplicity and unfortunately, you cannot make something simpler by adding a layer of complexity on top of it. It might look simpler at first glance, but it isn't once you start debugging, messing with source maps and buggy source code watchers.
If there was a native CoffeeScript interpreter inside browsers, then I might consider using it... Otherwise, no.
- maxscam 9y agoI found using the coffeescript loader for webpack solves all these problems. You cant execute cs in the browser but you still can place breakpoints in the original code. The compilation to js is not novel anyway, its the same thing as we see with ESnext just on a bigger scale.
- molszanski 9y agoDo you use any modern JS tools? Webpack? Require or import? Babel? In my experience any es6 tooling is much of a bigger pain compared to coffeescript tooling.
- jondubois 9y agoI'm full stack so when I saw the monstrosity of the React ecosystem rear its ugly head a couple of years ago, I retreated to back-end work mostly (I'm waiting out the storm). For my side projects I currently use the Polymer framework so I don't need a bundler, a compile step or 100 pointless dependencies. The only compilation that happens is when I vulcanize the front end for production (purely as an optimization). No transpiling happens when debugging and this saves me so much time and frustratiom - I just cannot bring myself to use React or TypeScript.
- molszanski 9y agoThat is kinda the point. CoffeeScript pipeline is literally nothing compared to modern a frontend pipeline complexity. And it brings tons of goodies. That is why people use it, even now.