Poll: Have you moved from JavaScript to CoffeeScript? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: Have you moved from JavaScript to CoffeeScript?

#21

Post by PetrolMan » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:35 PM UTC

grandalf wrote: post #16

jashkenas wrote: post #11

This is going to be a very interesting poll result. Even 5 or 10% penetration is something remarkable, for a language as widely-used as JavaScript. If you feel like providing any more color beyond your vote, your impressions after using CoffeeScript in anger -- I'd love to hear 'em.

This is a lame reason not to have tried it yet, but I need to first skim a short tutorial that shows how to integrate with jQuery and ideally also shows simple uses of Backbone and Underscore in coffeescript. BTW I love Backbone and Underscore and thanks to them (and also node) JS is actually more fun than ever.

I'm actually about to make a dip into using Backbone so I've been holding off on transitioning to CoffeeScript to limit my shock.

I've played around with the editor at GitHub though and I really like how CoffeeScript reads. That being said, actually using it in the wild seems is road I'm not quite ready to cross yet.

Re: Poll: Have you moved from JavaScript to CoffeeScript?

#22

Post by nzoschke » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:35 PM UTC

I just did my first tiny project in coffeescript and found it to be an odd experience. I was far too aware that I was programming in tokens that needed to map to JavaScript. Far too often I had to go back to the interactive "Try CoffeeScript" form on the website to peck things into until the parser errors went away.

To those more experienced: at some point does thinking in pure coffeescript take over, and the JavaScript transforms disappear?

It is worth noting, my final coffeescript code is a thing of beauty!

Re: Poll: Have you moved from JavaScript to CoffeeScript?

#23

Post by jashkenas » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:36 PM UTC

mikemaccana wrote: post #18

Initially, coming from a Python background, I looked at Coffeescript as a fix for all of JS's woes. In particular, I mistakenly though the fat arrow syntax would mean I never have to do any 'that = this' hacks again. In practice, though, I frequently need/want to call a method as a callback. And inside that function, I might want to get something from whatever initiated the callback, and save it to the object I'm a m…

Do you have an example of a real-world piece of code that wants to access both the lexical and dynamic "this" ... and isn't a jQuery callback?

Re: Poll: Have you moved from JavaScript to CoffeeScript?

#24

Post by krmmalik » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:36 PM UTC

Thanks for creating the poll for me. I dont think i have enough karma to create a poll. There's no option on my login to be able to do that(?)

Re: Poll: Have you moved from JavaScript to CoffeeScript?

#25

Post by spicyj » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:38 PM UTC

jashkenas wrote: post #23

mikemaccana wrote: post #18

Initially, coming from a Python background, I looked at Coffeescript as a fix for all of JS's woes. In particular, I mistakenly though the fat arrow syntax would mean I never have to do any 'that = this' hacks again. In practice, though, I frequently need/want to call a method as a callback. And inside that function, I might want to get something from whatever initiated the callback, and save it to the object I'm a m…

Do you have an example of a real-world piece of code that wants to access both the lexical and dynamic "this" ... and isn't a jQuery callback?

What's wrong with jQuery callbacks? ;)

Re: Poll: Have you moved from JavaScript to CoffeeScript?

#26

Post by StavrosK » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:38 PM UTC

amirshim wrote: post #7

CoffeeScript is amazing, I use it for everything including writing native iPhone apps (using titanium). Search for Album Plus in the app store. or visit http://www.albumpl.us/

I checked out your app, very interesting how native it feels. Would you recommend Titanium, in general?

Re: Poll: Have you moved from JavaScript to CoffeeScript?

#27

Post by pabloIMO » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:39 PM UTC

I use Coffeescript almost exclusively now.

However, if someone told me that Coffeescript was going to vanish forever from tomorrow on, I don't think I would be heartbroken.

Re: Poll: Have you moved from JavaScript to CoffeeScript?

#28

Post by huhtenberg » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:40 PM UTC

You may want to add "What is CoffeeScript?" option.

Re: Poll: Have you moved from JavaScript to CoffeeScript?

#29

Post by 3pt14159 » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:42 PM UTC

jashkenas wrote: post #11

This is going to be a very interesting poll result. Even 5 or 10% penetration is something remarkable, for a language as widely-used as JavaScript. If you feel like providing any more color beyond your vote, your impressions after using CoffeeScript in anger -- I'd love to hear 'em.

I've never done front end before (I just hate the JS syntax, so I've avoided it, besides a few jsonp requests) but with CoffeeScript I was persuaded to give it a try.

Here is my problem. Nothing is Google-able. Even basic things that I get caught up on the answer on IRC is usually "look up how to do it in JS, and then reform it to CS". Maybe I'm starting on the wrong stuff, but even though the syntax is wonderful, actually using libraries is a pain. I'm only on my 2nd day though, so maybe this is just the normal language growing pains.

Re: Poll: Have you moved from JavaScript to CoffeeScript?

#30

Post by barnaby » Wed, Jun 22, 2011, 3:42 PM UTC

I started using it last month, on production code. I work as a Javascript programmer in an otherwise all-Java software shop. I come from a Python background. I really love it.

I have Vim all set up to auto-complete it, to syntax highlight, and to auto-compile whenever I save. The bad news is: No Eclipse plugins, no notepad++ plugins. etc. So the only other devs who can work on it are on Mac and Linux (which to be fair, half of my company are on Ubuntu, but there's that 1/3 of the company on Windows that just can't practically work on coffeescript code).