At no point ever this: getUser = (id) -> url = "users/#{id}" dfd = $.ajax url: url format: 'json' method: 'get' u

At no point ever this: getUser = (id) -> url = "users/#{id}" dfd = $.ajax url: url format: 'json' method: 'get' url: url promise: dfd.promise() was unreadable to me. $.ajax+'\n'+indent instantly triggers nesting, hence call, in my head. The way I instinctively parse this code makes the added parentheses just distractive noise to me. Actually I would have written it this way, which makes things tick even more: getUser = (id) -> url = "users/#{id}" dfd = $.ajax url: url format: 'json' method: 'get' url: url promise: dfd.promise() A single newline makes the whole thing absolutely obvious to me, including the possibly ambiguous meaning around the implicit return. > It's not a case against using Coffeescript - it's a case against writing terrible code. Actually it looked like a case of change refusal and confirmation bias. The author seems to be well-versed in JavaScript, trying hard - consciously or not - to write JavaScript in CoffeeScript, which in turn produces terrible code. Every itch gets scratched, producing terrible irritation. > you can’t compress [whitespace] gzip. rake assets:precompile generates .gz for you so it doesn't even incur a performance hit on your servers. > The increase in debugging complexity is a fair point, and it does add an extra step in between finding a problem and fixing it. However, in practice, I'm not sure I've ever had this be a major problem Me neither. In fact the mapping is most of the times fairly obvious. Besides, editor enhancements[0], though not essential, helps a bit to not have to pull stuff in the browser every single time. Anyway SMAP support (or something close) is on the way[1] but in the meantime it doesn't bother me the least with CoffeeScript, thanks to it being so close to JavaScript. [0] http://esa-matti.suuronen.org/blog/2011/11/28/how-to-write-coffeescript-efficiently/ http://esa-matti.suuronen.org/blog/2011/11/28/how-to-write-c... [1] http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/08/debug-languages-on-javascript-vm http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/08/debug-languages-on-javascr...