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CoffeeScript is not a language worth learning

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Re: CoffeeScript is not a language worth learning

#111

Post by tjholowaychuk »

yesbabyyes wrote: post #58
tjholowaychuk wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

major fail

As a CoffeeScript - and JavaScript - fan, I must say that TJ's JavaScript is among the best code I've seen, in any language.

syntax doesn't make code beautiful, you can trust me on that one. I've seen beautiful C, lisp, erlang, js, asm, you name it. IMO the fanboy-ish nature of CS just screams naivety to me, kinda like when Ruby people think its syntax is "amazing", they all suck just in different ways :D haha if anything lisp is probably conceptually the most elegant

Re: CoffeeScript is not a language worth learning

#112

Post by Tyr42 »

jashkenas wrote: post #54
raganwald wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly my writing is obtuse. Haskell has a language features—lazy evaluation for example—with no equivalent in C. Nothing about lazy evaluation compiles more-or-less 1:1 into C code, it’s a program-wide transformation. CoffeeScript’s features are all JavaScript features, it’s a simple translation from some shorthand into some other shorthand. CoffeeScript is like the LET macro in ur-Scheme. Powerful, handy, but not…

> CoffeeScript’s features are all JavaScript features, > it’s a simple translation from some shorthand into > some other shorthand. This isn't entirely accurate -- in the sense that current CoffeeScript semantics can't be implemented as a series of "find-and-replace" operations into JavaScript. Some of the areas in which the AST transformations become more involved are: * Converting arbitrary statements into expressi…

So there are more advanced macros that are being used. It's not doing much a lisp couldn't do. I mean, look at scribble. It's still racket, even though it has not an s-exp in sight.

Chains of soaked invocations are just a Maybe Monad anyways. It's nothing too out there. You could write them in normal javascript fine.

Re: CoffeeScript is not a language worth learning

#113

Post by latchkey »

I'm starting to feel like anyone who has a negative opinion of CoffeeScript should prefix their statements with "I've spent the last M months writing code in CoffeeScript for H hours a day and these are my specific issues with it."

Otherwise, these endless discussions of JavaScript vs. CoffeeScript really aren't productive. If you haven't spent time with actual coding in it, then you probably don't have as well formed opinion on it, compared with people who are spending a lot of time with it.

So, I'll start with my own opinion...

I've spent the last 5 months writing code in CoffeeScript for 8-14 hours a day for my new startup. I can't imagine being as productive with JavaScript as I am with CoffeeScript. I write a fraction of the amount of code with CS than I would with JS and I get to take advantage of all sorts of great features, that would be much harder to replicate, like class hierarchy with constructors. I really love not having to type 'function() {}' all the time and the fat arrow really helps me with binding scope.

Re: CoffeeScript is not a language worth learning

#114

Post by tjholowaychuk »

latchkey wrote: post #113

I'm starting to feel like anyone who has a negative opinion of CoffeeScript should prefix their statements with "I've spent the last M months writing code in CoffeeScript for H hours a day and these are my specific issues with it." Otherwise, these endless discussions of JavaScript vs. CoffeeScript really aren't productive. If you haven't spent time with actual coding in it, then you probably don't have as well forme…

you actually type function(){} ? not utilize those editors hey :p

Re: CoffeeScript is not a language worth learning

#115

Post by tjholowaychuk »

yesbabyyes wrote: post #58
tjholowaychuk wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

major fail

As a CoffeeScript - and JavaScript - fan, I must say that TJ's JavaScript is among the best code I've seen, in any language.

actually now that i think about it, maybe that's why people like CS so much, their own inability to write clean code

Re: CoffeeScript is not a language worth learning

#116

Post by latchkey »

tjholowaychuk wrote: post #114
latchkey wrote: post #113

I'm starting to feel like anyone who has a negative opinion of CoffeeScript should prefix their statements with "I've spent the last M months writing code in CoffeeScript for H hours a day and these are my specific issues with it." Otherwise, these endless discussions of JavaScript vs. CoffeeScript really aren't productive. If you haven't spent time with actual coding in it, then you probably don't have as well forme…

you actually type function(){} ? not utilize those editors hey :p

I type => or ->

Once you get used to not reading the auto typed 'function() {}', it really makes your code look a lot cleaner.

Re: CoffeeScript is not a language worth learning

#117

Post by frankPants »

I mean really, all abstraction is just taking a step further away from the real problems and optimisations right! Let's all just write Assembler specific to the given chip architecture we're running on. What's with all this high level language abstraction about anyway, I think it's a fad...

Re: CoffeeScript is not a language worth learning

#118

Post by neilk »

raganwald wrote: post #82
neilk wrote: post #81

Raganwald: as much as I enjoy your writing, this condenses to a sentence. The Apple Summarizer actually did a good job: "And if you value making JavaScript easier to read by virtue of getting everyone to solve the same problems the same way with the same Design Patterns, CoffeeScript is a good tool for getting everyone else to write good JavaScript." Does this really deserve a full article and a bait-and-switchy head…

I consistently write long essays and I lack the patience to edit them to manageable length. More importantly, I lack the moral fibre to discard perfectly good points. Any fool can chop filler out of an essay. It takes an author of sterling character to discard perfectly good ideas in the interest of making what remains an even better essay. And I lack that character. Having written words about an idea I like, I find…

Ah, I was not saying TL;DR. I don't mind long. I don't even mind Steve Yegge long.

What bugged me about this article was the deliberate misdirection, which seemed to me not to have any function in the article. For me it felt like it was just to arrive at a simple point in a more complex way (and thus pad the length out).

But there's a huge scope for misunderstanding in these things, so I apologize for assuming too mcuh here. Maybe you thought it would be amusing to come at it from a different angle. Maybe I read it too quickly to appreciate that.

Re: CoffeeScript is not a language worth learning

#119

Post by rimantas »

tjholowaychuk wrote: post #111
yesbabyyes wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a CoffeeScript - and JavaScript - fan, I must say that TJ's JavaScript is among the best code I've seen, in any language.

syntax doesn't make code beautiful, you can trust me on that one. I've seen beautiful C, lisp, erlang, js, asm, you name it. IMO the fanboy-ish nature of CS just screams naivety to me, kinda like when Ruby people think its syntax is "amazing", they all suck just in different ways :D haha if anything lisp is probably conceptually the most elegant

True, you can find ugly parts anywhere if you look hard enough. This however does not make everything the same. There is a huge difference if you encounter ugliness in every line you write or just in obscure cases. Syntax does matter.

Re: CoffeeScript is not a language worth learning

#120

Post by rimantas »

lucian303 wrote: post #106

If you can't write Javascript, get out of the biz. Coffeescript is an abomination.

You remind me of those 1337 HTML "hackers" advocating to write HTML in Notepad. There are two different things knowledge and control of the code you write and efficiency of the coding itself. I've been writing HTML for 15 years and I always did it by hand. But never in Notepad — it is the most inefficient way to do it. A good editor with autocompletion, snippets, syntax highlighting will make you much more productive. The same applies to JS vs CS: CoffeeScript does not absolve you from need to know JavaScript, it just gives a way to write it in more productive (and fun) manner.
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