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Comment by erik-kallen | Hacker News Reader

Actually, debugging is quite simple. The generated script (unless minified) is very similar to the input code. Are you also against other options such as CoffeeScript? And do you think it is very hard to debug higher-level languages such as C, C# or Java because "if you are writing code to run on a processor, it is assembly you should be writing"?

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The question is how similar? Coffeescript has come a long way in keeping symbols similar enough to be debuggable and not polluting the javascript namespace. Once the code grows to a certain size, tracing from line number in error to a line of code in your source becomes non-trivial.

Also, since this has been a constant pain for me when using Google Closure compiler, how do you anticipate this tool working with existing javascript libraries? Hypothetically, can I port a C# application ( a reasonable/simple one, not with crazy winforms and stuff)? Is there a spec you're adhering to?

It comes with metadata for jQuery and jQueryUI, so obviously those libs can be used. I know of people using Node as well (and I hope to include that import lib in the distribution at some point).

As for porting an existing C# application, it will probably not be trivial, but the back-end stuff is most likely possible (as long as it doesn't have external references). Personally, for my own stuff I tend to compile stuff like DTOs and helpers to both Javascript (running on the client) and regular MSIL (running on the server), but that code has been written with this intent from the beginning.

I prefer to regard working with this to be writing Javascript but with tooling from 2012 instead of 1995.

Well, he actually said "debugging code when it is running," which a lot of people find valuable. Of course you can debug anything in the looser sense of the term, but tools like debuggers make the process more productive.

And yes, many people are against Coffeescript too for precisely this reason.

You can use the Chrome debugger just as if you had written the Javascript directly.

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