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Kickstarter: Make a Better CoffeeScript Compiler

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Re: Kickstarter: Make a Better CoffeeScript Compiler

#51

Post by evincarofautumn »

icebraining wrote: post #39
evincarofautumn wrote: post #6

I have this hope, however irrational, that compilers and similar projects become more common on Kickstarter. This is currently the only search result for “compiler”, which feels…wrong, somehow. If I’m not doing anything else this summer, I might just put up a language project and see if I don’t get laughed off the stage. Of course, it’s hard to offer good “prizes” (or whatever—Kickstarter doesn’t seem to have a term…

“prizes” (or whatever—Kickstarter doesn’t seem to have a term for them) They call them Rewards: http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creating%20a%20project#W...

Thanks. Couldn’t remember and missed it when I went looking. These things happen.

Re: Kickstarter: Make a Better CoffeeScript Compiler

#52

Post by bodyfour »

TrevorBurnham wrote: post #30
tkahn6 wrote: post #23

Is there any reason the compiler should be written in Javascript? I know it's pretty cool to have a language's compiler written in itself, but what if Javascript isn't the best environment to write a compiler?

What's really nice about the compiler being in JavaScript is that you can run JavaScript anywhere: in the browser, on any OS, embedded in any major web framework. If the compiler were written in any other language, you'd have to worry about dependencies. This applies to HTML and CSS preprocessors as well: I'd advocate Jade over Haml and Stylus or Less over Sass, simply because Jade and Stylus/Less aren't tied to the…

Actually this is the opposite of my experience. It's actually "Run Anywhere, as long as you're on an Intel or ARM CPU".

I know I'm in a tiny minority of HN readers, but I have to deal with a pretty wide variety of UNIX platforms.. my code needs to run on SPARC, Itanium, etc. Sure most of these have a foot-and-a-half in the grave but one still is hanging in there: I still see a decent number of AIX customers; it'll be with me for the next few years at least. If something can't be made to run on a POWER CPU I can't touch it.

In the past, the widely used scripting languages (perl/lua/python/ruby/...) always treated CPU portability as sacrosanct. In time, there have been CPU-specific optimizations work done (LuaJIT, etc) but there is always a way to run the underlying language anywhere.

In the JS world, all of the modern work seems to carry an assumption that node.js is available, which in turn relies on the V8 JIT engine. V8 supports Intel, ARM, and (to some extent) MIPS CPUs -- IIRC node itself only supports the first two of those.

I'm all for optimizing for the 99%-case CPUs, but it's frustrating that I can't use these JS-based tools even at a large performance penalty.

I was heartened by the existence of the "SpiderNode" project since it would provide some engine diversity to the node.js world. From what I can tell it doesn't seem to be getting much traction in the wider community though, so I don't know if that's going anywhere.

Last I heard, the V8 team's opinion on portability was "ARM is our bytecode, just emulate that".. which is a fine answer as far as it goes. However, I haven't seen anything that actually implements this advice though (short of emulating an entire linux kernel in qemu) I keep hoping that V8 will add a fallback non-JIT mode for greater portability but I'm sure it's not a priority for Chrome.

So JavaScript portability has ended up in an unfortunate predicament: the language itself should be portable to "any OS" but in reality all of the non-browser projects have tied their wagon to a single engine.. and that engine doesn't have wide portability as a goal.

Re: Kickstarter: Make a Better CoffeeScript Compiler

#53

Post by tomaskafka »

How about improving coffeescript language? I tested in on a small project recently and run into lot of ugly edge cases, where I had to read the generated code to find out that coffeescript compiled code differently than my expectations were?

example: http://t.co/omIdeNGA (jQuery chaining)

  # I'd expect these two blocks ...
  
  $output
  	.html 'a'
  	.prepend renderedHtml
  
  $output
  	.html ('a')
  	.prepend renderedHtml
  
  # ... to generate exactly same code as this:

  $output
  	.html('a') # you cannot put whitespace or omit parentheses here - but in other places, you are guided to remove them and use spaces
  	.prepend renderedHtml
Coffeescript:

  $output.html('a'.prepend(renderedHtml));
  
  $output.html('a'.prepend(renderedHtml));
  
  $output.html('a').prepend(renderedHtml);

Re: Kickstarter: Make a Better CoffeeScript Compiler

#55

Post by kennywinker »

TamDenholm wrote: post #32
GuiA wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+ You want to have rewards in lower donation brackets. Right now there's nothing between $25 and $200 — if I were to donate, I'd likely donate more than 25, but less than 200. You probably want rewards at the 50, 75, 150 levels. + Most projects offer tangible rewards (posters, booklets, figurines, keychains, tees-shirts etc.) that are just cool to have for any self-respecting geek. Unfortunately you're a software ent…

Perhaps you could find a sponsor to offer some free give away items like t-shirts etc to donors, in return they get mentioned in the kickstarter, the email list and throughout the project. I imagine any startup would happily back this, if you managed to get one that used coffeescript that'd be even better.

Along these lines, for Kickstarters where both individuals and companies are probably going to donate in you're going to want different rewards. Companies want recognition... their name in lights. Individuals want participation and swag. Set rewards up accordingly.
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