I disagree pretty strongly about the specifics of syntax being unimportant. If I had no experience and were speculating based on common sense, I would say "of c

I disagree pretty strongly about the specifics of syntax being unimportant. If I had no experience and were speculating based on common sense, I would say "of course the details of the syntax don't matter". Hell, I might have even said that a year ago. Then I started using CoffeeScript. Now, don't get me wrong; CoffeeScript has lots of little features that are very nice, like concise comprehensions and bound functions, which are not mere details. But if you took away all of that and left only the JavaScript with different syntax details, you would still have something much more pleasant to read and write than JS. -> function syntax, postfix conditionals, unless, on/off/yes/no, @, and "string #{interpolation}" are all tiny "syntax details", and I simply cannot overstress how much nicer they are than the JavaScript they trivially transform into.