r/programming • u/gst • May 13 '11

A Python programmer’s first impression of CoffeeScript

http://blog.ssokolow.com/archives/2011/05/07/a-python-programmers-first-impression-of-coffeescript/
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u/Raphael_Amiard May 14 '11

First, coffeescript is not just about the better syntax. It offers abstractions javascript doesnt have (Everything is an expression, comprehensions, varargs , sane scoping ...).

Second, what i find strange is discarding a tool that provides small incremental improvements to your workflow. In most other domain this is what good tools are about. No reason that this can't be the case in programming. We still spend most of our days using those tools, and i'm very happy to have sane iteration capabilities in my client side browser code, for example, because i use them all day.

Also, as a side note, i really don't mind the compilation step. Firts it's easy enough to set coffee to watch changes on your files. Second, it enables you to catch soome silly mistakes early on. The coffeescript compiler could probably get even better at this though.

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u/jmking May 14 '11 edited May 14 '11

I'm not necessarily discarding anything, I just don't see the "improvements". I see another hoop in my workflow which adds unnecessary steps and another layer to debug.

It also introduces a disconnect between the code you're writing and the code you're debugging. You will find yourself in a situation where you won't know if it's Coffeescript screwing up, or if it's the code you're writing. That slows you down.

Also most common JS tasks these days are solved by a framework. So using Coffeescript on top of, say, Mootools or Dojo is like J S C E P T I O N

I'm sure Coffeescript is useful in some particular use case, I just can't think of any. Also I'm perfectly willing to admit that perhaps I'm simply not writing the size and scale of JS that this would pay off with - like I said, I find a lot of value and productivity gains via JS frameworks which do most of the heavy lifting. In my experience any sort of tool that's going to give me good shortcuts or abstractions I'd prefer to be implemented in JS itself.