I personally write stuff like this because the act of writing out my thoughts forces me to think them through clearly. In this case, I actually do agree that Co

I personally write stuff like this because the act of writing out my thoughts forces me to think them through clearly. In this case, I actually do agree that CoffeeScript is a “little” language, but writing an essay in this form was an exercise in clarifying what is and isn’t a language and what that means. Other reasons for writing essays to convince people to use or not use a language like CoffeeScript might include a very natural desire to get lots of people using the tools you prefer. If you prefer JS, but everyone else write cool stuff (like Katy!) in CS, you will be annoyed trying to read their code or step through it in your debugger. Conversely, if you prefer CS, getting momentum behind it ensures its future and increases the probability you will still be able to use it in the future. I can certainly appreciate why people might want to evangelize either position. For me, it was an exercise in taking an interesting position—that it’s about the JavaScript it generates not the grammar or syntax—and see if I could make a credible argument.