Re:Comparing JavaScript, CoffeeScript & ClojureScript
by munificent on Thursday January 26, 2012 @07:56PM
(#3516750)
> I'm guessing that the only reason CoffeeScript embraces Javascript is for debugging.
The other reason is to avoid code bloat. Adding your own runtime library adds a lot of (generated) JS that has to be pushed down to the client.
This is something we're constantly fending with in Dart. Dart does have a runtime library (including a different DOM API!) and managing that without generating enormous amounts of JS is tricky. We're getting pretty good at dead code stripping, but doing that isn't easy. Without type annotations, it would be even harder.
The other reason is to avoid code bloat. Adding your own runtime library adds a lot of (generated) JS that has to be pushed down to the client.
This is something we're constantly fending with in Dart. Dart does have a runtime library (including a different DOM API!) and managing that without generating enormous amounts of JS is tricky. We're getting pretty good at dead code stripping, but doing that isn't easy. Without type annotations, it would be even harder.