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Comment by rfnslyr | Hacker News Reader

If you failed at using Illustrator or Gimp effectively, then you didn't try hard enough. Follow video tutorials and try to recreate graphics, in time you'll get better.

Ugh, this entire thing is in coffeescript too, now I have to learn coffeescript to make sense of this library.

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You might be shocked (shocked!) at how clean and readable some of the CoffeeScript source is. To pick an example at random:

https://github.com/artursapek/mondrian/blob/master/src/geome...

Artur really did a nice job with structuring this project...

Vanilla JS is easier for me. I don't have time to learn the workings of coffeescript just to read a library casually.

'The golden rule of CoffeeScript is: "It's just JavaScript". The code compiles one-to-one into the equivalent JS, and there is no interpretation at runtime'

There really is very little magic with coffeescript. Most of it is syntactic sugar which can be learned at a glance of: http://coffeescript.org/ .

Don't mean to come off as pushy but I think it's well worth learning what coffeescript is. Especially if you are familiar with javascript, as it's a straight upgrade in your toolkit.

As an additional testimony, I've actually been learning coffeescript without really knowing JavasScript, and it has actually gone fairly well. For the most part it's intuitive, and if you're willing to be a little frustrated figuring out some of the syntax changes it can be rewarding.

But obviously you do have enough time to complain about it.

> Ugh, this entire thing is in coffeescript too, now I have to learn coffeescript to make sense of this library.

This reminds me of a really funny bit Louis CK does about wifi on an airplane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpUNA2nutbk#t=234

Basically, the punchline is how ridiculous it is that some people can believe they're entitled to something being a certain way, that they didn't know even existed until a few minutes ago.

"Ugh, this really cool library isn't written in something I already know. What an asshole for doing that."

> Ugh, this entire thing is in coffeescript too

You mean the entire thing is noise free an easily readable, I agree.

I think the OP is not saying "it was impossible to learn", but "the amount of effort required to learn wasn't worth the return I would get from it". The latter may well be a sensible decision.

And it's great when someone tries to makes the learning process easier, and even better when they open source it.

Yeah, exactly. I also don't have a need to use any of those heavy weight apps more than a few times a year, so every time I go back, I have to start over again from scratch. Something appealing, lightweight, with good tutorials would be such a boon for web developers who don't have time to learn all the subtleties of Illustrator.

Coffeescript is way easier to learn than Illustrator.

I learned coffeescript in literally 30 minutes. I have a hard time taking any js dev seriously who sees coffeescript as hard.

Wow that's the opposite reaction than what I had.

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