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Please forgive me for intruding the holyness of CoffeeScript, but I always found and always will find CoffeeScript appaling and unusable. A wrapper for otherwise syntactically and otherwise perfectly readable and codeable JavaScript? Come on guys. Just learn JS, will you?

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I already know JavaScript, and prefer CoffeeScript. But thanks for sharing your irrelevant opinion, and enjoy your false sense of superiority.

I can see that the parent comment was being a bit of a jerk, but why are all the comments in response (such as this one) being even worse? You could actually say something constructive in response instead of just resorting to personal attacks...

I say constructive things in response to constructive things, and am summarily dismissive of comments lacking substance.

Every time CoffeeScript is mentioned, there's always at least one comment like this. It's either trolling or people being closed-minded, but either way there's no sense in trying to have an actual discussion with someone who opens the conversation in this way.

If anyone would like to have a real debate on the merits of CoffeeScript, I'd love to participate, but the reality is it's largely a matter of taste.

We have learned JS, probably you forgot that you need to know it to learn CS?

This and debugging are my two biggest gripes about CoffeeScript. If you are saying this, then you probably never learned JavaScript to the extent that would be required to write what you are writing in CoffeeScript. Maybe that is a good thing and a testament to the power of CoffeeScript.

I am currently working with a bunch of people who don't understand functional scope nor closures (fully). They do, however, understand that sometimes they need to use "=>" for function declarations instead of "->".

You are making wide, sweeping judgements that are almost certainly not representative of the majority of people using CoffeeScript.

They are accurate representations of the people I have met and worked with. The sad truth is that most people do not really know javascript.

Better you don't work with those people. I don't want to blame you for their lack of knowledge. But if you want to do them (and you and your project) some good, order them to learn JavaScript thoroughly (which includes the unexpected but regular features that deviate from other languages and the common pitfalls), and then go back to CS! CS inherits from JS and makes no sense without it and it fixes some pitfalls but just the ones that you can fix with the constraints and additions of a new grammar. This is not the hard path but the only path to CS.

> always will find CoffeeScript appaling and unusable. ... otherwise perfectly ... codeable JavaScript?

Wait, are you being sarcastic?

You're still coding in assembler I assume?

Why do that when you already have perfectly readable patterns of bits.

It's important to use zerospace to make your bits more readable! For instance:

The difference between assembly and (for example) C is vast. The difference between JS and CS is much smaller.

Whether the difference in usability and maintainability is worth the extra layer of complexity is an important question.

It's an important question, but one that many people have decided has a clear answer (in their judgement, for their own coding circumstances). In many cases, though not all, that answer is yes.

For me, it's similar to using a powered driver when assembling furniture.

Yes, there's added complexity. (Need to keep the battery charged; need to adjust the force dial to control how hard the screws and bolts are tightened).

But yes, dealing with that small bit of added complexity is worth it. (The furniture is assembled more quickly, more correctly, and with less irritation on my part.)

I could of course tighten all those bolts manually. But I don't wanna.

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