Why the Rampant Fanboyism Around CoffeeScript Worries Me

TLDR: "All these hippies are doing things that don't benefit me! I don't want a new programming language! Whine!"

The part of CoffeeScript hate I find most amusing is all the hate for the fact that it's a language that compiles to JavaScript. "The code it generates is bad!" "It's a leaky abstraction!" Well guess what guys, the C compiler that pretty much every piece of code running on your system went through does exactly the same thing, only it generates assembly. Since you don't know assembly (or anything other than how to animate ads with jQuery), you aren't complaining. But it's the same principle and it works well enough. C doesn't expose all of assembly's features. C doesn't always generated optimal assembly code. And yet, we use it anyway, because it's just so much nicer than the "real" underlying language. (And of course, x86 assembly is not what x86 processors run anymore. But that translation takes place in silicon, so you see even less complaining.)

Complain about actual problems, not about what you can see. If all you talk about is the obvious, you look stupid.

I wrote the user-interface for my iPad app in JS (using PhoneGap) initially. Working on a large pure JS UI project sure makes you realize the shortcomings of JS, both fundamental and syntactic. It took a week to convert the JS to CS by hand and I did it hoping that the one-time effort would pay itself off over the next few months of development. Within just 2 weeks after the conversion, I started cranking out more features than I had in months before, and surprisingly with very little new code being written.

CS enabled me to write cleaner, simpler code in 5 lines instead of 30 lines in JS. While I don't care about the LOC as a metric of performance, I do have a limited short-term memory and can't remember the intricate workings of a class I wrote 2 months ago. Being able to recollect how a class functions is significantly easier if you have to read 50 LOC instead of 300.

I don't understand why people worry about being pro or against a language or a variant. Before CS, I managed to write decent JS that made me productive. With CS, I write better code and am more productive. Hence I continue to use CS. YMMV.

Also it's amusing to see this was posted to HN by jashkenas himself.

At one point, the author writes:

> OK im done ranting at invisible Brendan Eich now (as if hes going to read this) :-)

Write a more cogent piece, and he will. I'm amazed at how generous Brendan is with his time. He responds to tweets, and to numerous comments on his blog. When I asked him to look over the part of my CoffeeScript book that deals with the history of JavaScript, he not only did so, he also offered technical corrections and suggestions pertaining to other parts of the book. Just today, he took to HN to participate in a vigorous discussion of Google's forthcoming Dart language: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2982256

In short: Rather than using the creator of JavaScript as a strawman in a meandering diatribe (one that's 3,700 words long and yet "only 1/3 done"), you should try to organize your thoughts and engage with him.

I love and use CoffeeScript because it removes almost all of JavaScript's cruft, making the true purpose of the code much clearer. Ultimately, removing cruft is all CoffeeScript does—it doesn't fundamentally change JavaScript—but man does it do it well.

That being said, CoffeeScript has bugs[1]. I've run into its bugs before, and there are few things more frustrating than dealing with bugs in your language.

[1]: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/issues?labels=bug...

At least it's not an incredibly long and rambling "one third finished" (!!) essay in favor of more terseness. Because that would be ridiculous.

Seems weak and confused. There are some good arguments to be had around readability, writability and when to focus on what.

Those are not here.

Hey im the author. Its pretty clear im getting murdered here on how long winded yet incomplete my post is. Next time I'll wait till its done to post :-) and edit a lot more. I lol'd at some of these comments. I certainly don't take myself too seriously but obviously have strong opinions about JS and the direction of harmony. I have used the very hot topic of CS as a hook to talk about something a bit more boring, the standards process and where its taking JS. Thanks so much to those that read the whole thing, I'm sorry it made it to HN before I finished it. Seeing as how I've had all of 5 visitors to my blog I wasn't expecting to get too much visibility to it. It was more a way to organize my thoughts and stop accosting my co-workers at lunch time with my long winded rants. But I am still working on it and will post the other parts and a much shorter min version once its done.

Well written, though a tad [ok, way too] long. Having had TJ reject a Coffeescript related pull request of mine on a project of his I have experienced his and the Learnboost teams distaste for Coffeescript.

My problem with CS is the way it is taught and demonstrated, with every example trying to outdo the last in how much syntax they can leave out. It makes the code "pretty" but unnecessarily complicated. Otherwise I am a fan of reduced boilerplate, comprehensions and the like. Just don't expect me to remove () just because I can.

Maybe the author should just, you know, not use CoffeeScript. I have a problem with preferential statements framed as empirical statements as well.

"CoffeScript make you more productive!"

Not if I'm wildly proficient in Javascript and hate Ruby.

Horses for courses, Andrew. Some mechanics prefer Mac tools, while others prefer Snap-On. The only one that is wrong is the one who claims they built a better motor because of the brand of tools they used.

I like the idea of CoffeeScript. But so far, for me, it's just not better enough for me to use it over plain JavaScript. The reason I use C over assembly is b/c there is such a HUGE difference. If C were only marginally better I wouldn't bother with it either.