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This pervasive assumption of CoffeeScript's superiority as a foregone conclusion is ridiculous. There are so many excellent JavaScript programmers that choose n

by eldude 15y ago

This pervasive assumption of CoffeeScript's superiority as a foregone conclusion is ridiculous. There are so many excellent JavaScript programmers that choose not to program in CoffeeScript for so many reasons, that it's surprising to see the extent of this assumption. Defend the merits of CoffeeScript all you want, I'm not even bothering to argue with you about them, and _I even conceded already that it does in fact have merit._ However, if at JSConf this year, I start seeing a bunch of projects presented in CoffeeScript, but advertised as JavaScript, I'm going to simultaneously be incredibly annoyed at the presumptions of such behavior while I learn CoffeeScript in order to follow along because it will have crossed the threshold. My original point still stands that this is a mislabeled title. If this is JavaScript, and I know JavaScript, then I'd be able to understand the code without learning something else. Yes, again, I _could_ go learn that thing and thus understand the documentation as I almost certainly eventually will, but how disingenuous of the CoffeeScript community to refuse to call CoffeeScript by its name, expecting _everyone else_ to learn CoffeeScript in order to treat it as equivalent, when it very clearly is not. Just be straightforward and call it CoffeeScript _because you think CoffeeScript is awesome_. Why on earth is this disturbingly so objectionable?

tjholowaychuk 15y ago
+1 I've never disliked the fact that it was built, everyone has fun playing around with little transpiler things but it's turned into some retarded religious warfare. The show-stopper for me is when it gets to the point of pull-requests containing "Add coffeescript support". Once you go that far it's just flat-out wrong
phillmv 15y ago
>Why on earth is this disturbingly so objectionable? Ruby dev here with limited JS/CS knowledge. Are there any sections of CS where the semantic mapping to JS is not obvious? It took me about five minutes to figure out what was going on.
pooriaazimi 15y ago
I completely agree with you about the title, as I've said it twice already (thrice, including this one!). What I completely disagree is the other parts of your original comment. I wish you the best regardless of your scripting language of choice! :)
Detrus 15y ago
People who write libraries and frameworks want to advertise them, get good SEO from the larger JS community. So they'll call their projects Blah.js. It's also easier to remember JS libraries as Blah.js instead of having to worry that it's Blah.js or Blah.coffee. Yes it is somewhat dishonest. But users of a lib or framework should not be reading its code in most circumstances. Otherwise it's crap API/documentation. With CoffeeScript you can use the lib from JavaScript seamlessly. It is essentially Blah.js. If the lib was written in Ojb-J or ClojureScript that's another story. Then lib authors couldn't say it's Blah.js. If you need to read coffee code as JS for some reason, compile it. If you need to submit a patch, doing it in CoffeeScript will indeed be a minor inconvenience. Not so for Clojure, Obj-J or whatever else will come along. ---- And on another note. These languages compiling to JS are essentially causing fragmentation. If ClojureScript gets as popular as CoffeeScript is now it won't be pretty. I'll bet that CoffeeScript will reach critical mass at some point. The newest libs and tutorials will all be Coffee. JS.next should adopt as many features as possible or promote it as the new standard to stem the tide and make fragmentation less obvious. CoffeeScript would be more stable as a language, hard to make JS semantics prettier.

by eldude 15y ago

tjholowaychuk 15y ago

+1 I've never disliked the fact that it was built, everyone has fun playing around with little transpiler things but it's turned into some retarded religious warfare. The show-stopper for me is when it gets to the point of pull-requests containing "Add coffeescript support". Once you go that far it's just flat-out wrong

phillmv 15y ago

>Why on earth is this disturbingly so objectionable? Ruby dev here with limited JS/CS knowledge. Are there any sections of CS where the semantic mapping to JS is not obvious? It took me about five minutes to figure out what was going on.

pooriaazimi 15y ago

I completely agree with you about the title, as I've said it twice already (thrice, including this one!). What I completely disagree is the other parts of your original comment. I wish you the best regardless of your scripting language of choice! :)

Detrus 15y ago

People who write libraries and frameworks want to advertise them, get good SEO from the larger JS community. So they'll call their projects Blah.js. It's also easier to remember JS libraries as Blah.js instead of having to worry that it's Blah.js or Blah.coffee. Yes it is somewhat dishonest. But users of a lib or framework should not be reading its code in most circumstances. Otherwise it's crap API/documentation. With CoffeeScript you can use the lib from JavaScript seamlessly. It is essentially Blah.js. If the lib was written in Ojb-J or ClojureScript that's another story. Then lib authors couldn't say it's Blah.js. If you need to read coffee code as JS for some reason, compile it. If you need to submit a patch, doing it in CoffeeScript will indeed be a minor inconvenience. Not so for Clojure, Obj-J or whatever else will come along. ---- And on another note. These languages compiling to JS are essentially causing fragmentation. If ClojureScript gets as popular as CoffeeScript is now it won't be pretty. I'll bet that CoffeeScript will reach critical mass at some point. The newest libs and tutorials will all be Coffee. JS.next should adopt as many features as possible or promote it as the new standard to stem the tide and make fragmentation less obvious. CoffeeScript would be more stable as a language, hard to make JS semantics prettier.