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CoffeeScript's Time is Waning For Me

mattgreer.org

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Re: CoffeeScript's Time is Waning For Me

#21

Post by [deleted] »

city41 wrote: post #16
bengotow wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about this statement as well. It sounds like the author might be: - Creating big complex methods instead of breaking code into smaller (testable) ones? - Nesting callbacks multiple levels deep, instead of using something like Node Async to flatten out code flow? - Choosing a Coffeescript code style that leads him to put callbacks on their own line, or something like that? - Something else? Not implying th…

I'm the author of the blog post. Significant whitespace is pretty dividing, and really boils down to preference. I have a strong dislike for it, and have avoided any language with it, CoffeeScript being the only exception. Here is a typical snippet of my code as seen in my editor: http://i.imgur.com/2yVhgcz.png IMO, those four methods really bleed together and are hard to discern, not to mention the if statements. I…

[deleted]

Re: CoffeeScript's Time is Waning For Me

#22

Post by ricardobeat »

suchow wrote: post #17
city41 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the author of the blog post. Significant whitespace is pretty dividing, and really boils down to preference. I have a strong dislike for it, and have avoided any language with it, CoffeeScript being the only exception. Here is a typical snippet of my code as seen in my editor: http://i.imgur.com/2yVhgcz.png IMO, those four methods really bleed together and are hard to discern, not to mention the if statements. I…

Try removing the indentation guides or decreasing their contrast so that they are just barely visible. They appear to cause strong visual grouping between code blocks and make it harder to see what's what.

I'd add using four spaces and a slightly increased line-height has major benefits to readability.

Re: CoffeeScript's Time is Waning For Me

#24

Post by jbeja »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #20

The author uses CoffeeScript for completely different reasons than I do. While a lot of the convenience features of CoffeeScript are awesome, I use CoffeeScript more to compile JS to standards-compliant, consistent code. Variables are hoisted, commas are automatically inserted, semi-colons are taken care of, and the entire script is put into a lovely self-invoking function that helps fool-proof things. Furthermore, b…

I couldn't agree more.

Re: CoffeeScript's Time is Waning For Me

#25

Post by ricardobeat »

spion wrote: post #15
elwell wrote: post #3

> If you’re contributing to the JS community, you’re better off writing in JavaScript. More people will contribute and/or adopt your code. Quality, not quantity. Maybe the higher quality contributors are more likely to get excited about a cs project over js.

Initially I got excited about CS, until I discovered that it forbids shadowing and conflates variable declaration with assignment at the same time, leading to random bugs happening all over the place as I introduce a name that I've used somewhere in a deeper scope. No, identifier names are one of the big problems of all languages and CS gives you even less name locality. Bad.

I found it helps clear up your naming habits and avoid short names, which are a major source of opaqueness in code.

Re: CoffeeScript's Time is Waning For Me

#26

Post by rmrfrmrf »

spion wrote: post #15
elwell wrote: post #3

> If you’re contributing to the JS community, you’re better off writing in JavaScript. More people will contribute and/or adopt your code. Quality, not quantity. Maybe the higher quality contributors are more likely to get excited about a cs project over js.

Initially I got excited about CS, until I discovered that it forbids shadowing and conflates variable declaration with assignment at the same time, leading to random bugs happening all over the place as I introduce a name that I've used somewhere in a deeper scope. No, identifier names are one of the big problems of all languages and CS gives you even less name locality. Bad.

I'd argue that that's a feature. You're asking for decreased code comprehension and bugs when you start using identical variable names everywhere.

I have noticed a lot of "Issues" in the CoffeeScript repo from angry hackers that were mad that CoffeeScript forces them to code with some modicum of responsibility (no drop-throughs in switch statements, no var shadowing, etc.). Doesn't make sense to me why people would blast JavaScript for letting you do stupid shit then get butthurt when a solution takes those same problems away.

Re: CoffeeScript's Time is Waning For Me

#27

Post by ricardobeat »

elwell wrote: post #3

> If you’re contributing to the JS community, you’re better off writing in JavaScript. More people will contribute and/or adopt your code. Quality, not quantity. Maybe the higher quality contributors are more likely to get excited about a cs project over js.

That would be true if there wasn't a very vocal swath of developers that won't even use a CS project out of prejudice, much less contribute to it. I don't know why that religious war came to exist, but it's the unfortunate reality.

Re: CoffeeScript's Time is Waning For Me

#28

Post by fat0wl »

omni wrote: post #2

"As my project grows in size, significant whitespace becomes more and more of a problem. It’s just plain not readable or visually parsable. Your files become a wall of dense text. Damn you Python, damn you to hell!" I would appreciate an explanation of this paragraph. How exactly does project size compound issues with significant whitespace? Are you indenting five levels or something?

just want to drop another vote against against significant whitespace...

i find it slows down my coding because rather than coding & then quickly tidying i instead have to obsess over this tidying at every step or the code won't work in the first place. I find it more efficient to do the code grouping as a "post-POC" task (or when things are starting to look confusing) and to leave the visual look to my discretion. I feel like whitespace languages are kindof subliminally forcing you toward 1 code style. There are some complex functions that look better to me certain ways -- specifically in cases where a group of commands are essentially executing one simple function. Once they work they can be forgotten & the programmer can de-emphasize them in some way according to taste

anyway, I am not a CoffeeScript guy. I've been avoiding it and waiting for Dart or something like that to take hold, since I'd like to see some serious language benefits if I'm going to have to introduce a compilation step. It's one of those things I remain slightly bitter about because some shops judge you for not being into it (as well as Sass, Haml) even though they offer negligible benefits for many projects. That said, I can imagine cases where CoffeeScript would offer significant benefits (they are right there in the tutorials) but I haven't really found those types of situations too much in the wild (tons of array math etc.), and if so they can often be simplified via jQuery or the like anyway.

So yea if it works for you, great, but I am glad whitespace syntax is not de-facto in the js world. I think js should remain as Java is -- other languages can be built on top of it with their own syntax types but developers still have the choice to ignore these supposed advancements & cherry-pick the ones they like (in my case progress in pure js + Dart will be where i focus my learning).

Re: CoffeeScript's Time is Waning For Me

#29

Post by brianchu »

Also relevant: a big question is how CoffeeScript is going to deal with ES6 and the overlapping syntax between ES6 and CS, which may involve breaking backwards compatibility or leaving out ES6 features.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078969

jashkenas > So in general, what I'd like to see mainline CoffeeScript do, is adopt useful ES6, ES7, and ES8 features, as soon as they land in enough platforms/browsers to be widely useful (yield may be at this point already, or very soon), and to continue to try and find a pleasing minimalist syntax for writing and reading them. If this means taking the ES* syntax wholesale, that's fine. If it means minting a new (and hopefully, but arguably, nicer) syntax, that's fine too. And if it means breaking backwards compatibility, that's also alright, as the compiled lowest-common-denominator JS output will still be perfectly compatible with the new stuff.

Re: CoffeeScript's Time is Waning For Me

#30

Post by reeses »

omni wrote: post #2

"As my project grows in size, significant whitespace becomes more and more of a problem. It’s just plain not readable or visually parsable. Your files become a wall of dense text. Damn you Python, damn you to hell!" I would appreciate an explanation of this paragraph. How exactly does project size compound issues with significant whitespace? Are you indenting five levels or something?

Anyone who has maintained Makefiles will have a strong opinion on semantic whitespace.

Maybe not opinion, but reaction. Generally involving visceral fear or anger.

It's not that it's always bad, every hour of every day. It's that one time, at 1am, when you shouldn't be working but you are, something doesn't behave properly, and it turns out Bob the Intern re-indented a block of code to use tabs instead of spaces[1], but you couldn't see it because your editor is configured to use four spaces per tab and your coding standards dictate four spaces per level of scope.

[1] Why are you using spaces anyway, you complete and utter savage?

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