My comment is civil and explannatory. You may not like my sentiments, but down votes are not intended for unpopularity. Not only that, but in this case, my comment serves to reinforce the standards of HN regarding mis-titling of links and it is being downvoted.

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

I am currently working on two projects written predominantly in CoffeeScript, and I completely agree with your original post. It is a mistake to think of CoffeeScript as simply another Javascript, and it is a mistake to make the assumption that people that are comfortable with Javascript will be comfortable within a CoffeeScript project.

CoffeeScript is more than just Javascript with a small sprinkling of syntactic sugar. There is a definite learning curve between Javascript and CoffeeScript. List comprehensions, extended regular expressions, and splats - these are just a few of the things that make up that learning curve. The changes in variable scoping that CoffeeScript makes is another.

I think that perhaps the best practice for publishing a CoffeeScript project should probably be to append a .coffee to the name rather than the usual .js. This would go a long way towards eliminating the kind of misunderstanding that you refer to in your OP.

A side note, am I the only one that has noticed an increase in downvote-readiness here lately?

That's why I down voted you. Is a JS compiler beneath you? Fine. Then post about that. Don't try to slip it into a veiled complaint about title accuracy.

If I can't fork and contribute to the project in javascript, but instead have to set up my environment for coffee script to contribute, then it's not javascript.

This isn't just about readability and comprehension, it's about contribution as well.

If the compiled javascript is bundled in there and I can read it, fair enough. If you can't accept patches and code contributions in javascript, then that's not javascript.

Really, no one's forcing you to write it. But if you have a working understanding of JavaScript and you can't read CoffeeScript fluently, it's because you aren't trying. Just swallow your pride and deal with it already.

Come on, what kind of percentage are we talking about here? Tiny. Absolutely tiny.

Take ten minutes right now and read through the CoffeeScript reference-- poof, you learned it. It is just JavaScript.

Well, you haven't learned it unless you memorised absolutely every aspect of it, which you're unlikely to do on a first read. And it isn't "just" JavaScript- it has significant whitespace, different object notation, etc. etc.

Don't get me wrong, I've started using CoffeeScript and I like it. But it's a tiny, tiny minority language. There are a ton of JavaScripters out there that haven't learnt it because they don't need or want it. That's their choice.

Oh man!

I guess I don't know any programming languages whatsoever.

If you love being ignorant of CoffeeScript enough to publicly form your identity around it then stop being in denial about your tone.

Nobody would argue about his comment if CS wasn't such an easy language to learn. If you know PHP, you can learn writing in ASP.net in a week, but if you know JavaScript, you can sing in CoffeeScript in an hour.

First, I'll establish some modest authority on the subject by pointing out that I've worked directly with Tim Caswell, who helped create CoffeeScript, at multiple jobs now. He's explained to me how they developed it and we've discussed the merits of it.

Second, I don't believe CoffeeScript is lacking merit. I make no claims of such. I'm actually happy that CoffeeScript exists in that I hope it brings more people into the JavaScript fold so long as it does not detract in ways like this.

Third, I understand what CoffeeScript is and how it works, but have chosen not to learn it. That's my prerogative and I make no claims to the superiority of that choice apart from my choosing it.

Fourth, I _could_ talk about how time is not free. Installing a CoffeeScript compiler, learning CoffeeScript, undertaking the mental frame of reference change necessary to switch between context, are equally not free, but I don't feel the need to further this defense as it has been made many _many_ times before, especially here on HN.

In reality, this is about none of the above. This is labeled as JavaScript when _it is not_. I repeat, CoffeeScript is _not_ JavaScript. To the many responses this will incite, I'd direct you to my points above. This is not intrinsically a bad thing. Far from it, if CoffeeScript was not different, it would not be relevant. It is its difference that makes it relevant. I will likely eventually learn CoffeeScript when it becomes necessary or worth it. In fact, I attempted to previously, but setting up auto-compilers, etc... took about 20 minutes too long, and given the insufficient value proposition, I didn't bother to finish learning it.

I come across many node/JavaScript/Github projects regularly and don't have the time to bother learning or using 90% of them, but I bookmark them because they are intriguing and I hope to have them if and when I do need or want to use them. That's 9/10 _JavaScript_ projects that I don't get to just because I don't have the time.

I'll repeat my main point because that is all my original comment was ever about, if CoffeeScript is not different, there's no point in it existing; if it is different, then it's a positive reason otherwise it would receive no attention; if it is positively different, then why not market it as such? It's obvious that those who point out that CoffeeScript is a dialect and compiles to JavaScript so it is therefore an acceptable mis-labeling are attempting to have their cake and eat it too at the expense of people like me that either have not taken the time to learn it yet, or do not care to for _numerous_ philosophical reasons which I defend are quite valid, though being a pragmatist, ultimately will not factor into my reasoning.

What made me downvote both your original and this comment is that I can't accept that you (seemingly) write a lot of code in JS, but don't want to spen just 1 hour to learn CS properly (I know it takes this short, because I just did it a while ago. I haven't written any JS code since I was 14 - 6 years ago - but started reading coffeescript.org and in 3 hours was able to do everything I wanted in CS. So for a JS master like yourself it wouldn't take longer than an hour to master CS too).

To me, your comment sounded like an abacus master who doesn't want to learn Arabic numbers and multiplication table, because he's too busy. And again, I have nothing against you and downvoting a comment on HN !== hating you and/or disagreeing with everything you say or think.

My original point still stands that this is a mislabeled title. If this is JavaScript, and I know JavaScript, then I'd be able to understand the code without learning something else. Yes, again, I _could_ go learn that thing and thus understand the documentation as I almost certainly eventually will, but how disingenuous of the CoffeeScript community to refuse to call CoffeeScript by its name, expecting _everyone else_ to learn CoffeeScript in order to treat it as equivalent, when it very clearly is not. Just be straightforward and call it CoffeeScript _because you think CoffeeScript is awesome_.

Why on earth is this disturbingly so objectionable?

I've never disliked the fact that it was built, everyone has fun playing around with little transpiler things but it's turned into some retarded religious warfare. The show-stopper for me is when it gets to the point of pull-requests containing "Add coffeescript support". Once you go that far it's just flat-out wrong

It's also easier to remember JS libraries as Blah.js instead of having to worry that it's Blah.js or Blah.coffee.

Yes it is somewhat dishonest. But users of a lib or framework should not be reading its code in most circumstances. Otherwise it's crap API/documentation.

With CoffeeScript you can use the lib from JavaScript seamlessly. It is essentially Blah.js. If the lib was written in Ojb-J or ClojureScript that's another story. Then lib authors couldn't say it's Blah.js.

If you need to read coffee code as JS for some reason, compile it. If you need to submit a patch, doing it in CoffeeScript will indeed be a minor inconvenience. Not so for Clojure, Obj-J or whatever else will come along.

---- And on another note. These languages compiling to JS are essentially causing fragmentation. If ClojureScript gets as popular as CoffeeScript is now it won't be pretty. I'll bet that CoffeeScript will reach critical mass at some point. The newest libs and tutorials will all be Coffee. JS.next should adopt as many features as possible or promote it as the new standard to stem the tide and make fragmentation less obvious. CoffeeScript would be more stable as a language, hard to make JS semantics prettier.

Ruby dev here with limited JS/CS knowledge. Are there any sections of CS where the semantic mapping to JS is not obvious? It took me about five minutes to figure out what was going on.

I wish you the best regardless of your scripting language of choice! :)

He never said anyone else should not learn CoffeeScript nor that CoffeeScript was bad, but that for whatever reason in his own personal life it hasn't become valuable enough to do so. And yet still, the point of his comment had nothing to do with that, and instead simply requests that stories be labeled accurately. Seems completely uncontroversial to me.

in the last part, my emphasis was on the word everything. If you divide that comment into two different comments (first being 'misleading article' and second, (implicitly) 'I don't want to learn CS, though I write code in JS regularly'), I'd up vote the first and down vote the second comment.

It is true that his decision does not affect anyone else, but I don't believe that even such decisions can't be criticized. And I'm arguing that his decision of not wanting to learn a dialect of a language he uses on a daily basis (that would take a very short time) is not a good one, and is un-hackerish. If he had taken time to learn and have decided that CS is not for him, I neither would've down-voted him, nor would I comment on his decision.

I'm sorry if I wasted your's or any one else's time by my comments on this unimportant matter. I know that HN's comment section is meant to be a place for constructive arguments, but I couldn't help it. I read that an unseen friend is doing something that I think is really wrong, and I can't help mentioning it.

Maybe it is a good idea to have the value of downvotes diminish the more you use them.

I think another way could be to decrease a users karma by 1 for every 5 downvotes he makes... and also limit the number of downvotes a user can make in a day.

If you know javascript well and are familiar with it's many gotchas and you know how to use your text editor well with javascript, the coffeescript really doesn't add more than it detracts.

This is generally true of most CS projects. I can't speak specifically to whether or not you can use Tower.js without coffee, just saying don't discount a project because the author wrote it in CS. Spine.js (http://spinejs.com) is a great example of what I'm talking about.

If you're a half-way decent js dev, it's hard to believe CoffeeScript could be a cognitive stumbling block for you. Inferring custom baked inheritance in js libraries surely is more difficult.

Of course CS isn't for everyone, but a hard stance that a CS lib can't be considered 'JavaScript' seems more of a political stonewalling than an intelligent conversation. But, I've come to expect such thorny defenses cultivated by a coterie of stern acolytes who have devoted themselves to a particular flavor of programming.

As sort of an apology, I wrote up a little bookmarklet to translate the page into JavaScript at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3641217

I just want to point to this comment and its children as the reason that HN should have comment thread collapsing.

There's no reason the majority of people checking the comments for this link should have to see the language debate. It's not relevant to the Tower framework. The only reason this debate is so high up is because people chose to upvote the original comment.

By comparison, think about Python. Some libraries use C for performance gain. Does that mean you can't use them with Python? No. These are still perfectly valid Python libraries.

The point is still flawed, though - CoffeeScript is not JavaScript, and I have no interest in learning it (I'd rather spend the time learning to write better JS myself). I, and everyone else with my mindset, has their time wasted by this mislabelling; we would not have clicked through if the title said CoffeeScript.

The author decided to write the source code of the library in CoffeeScript, which then compiles to perfectly valid javascript that you can import.

The analogy about Python is that you don't have to know C to be able to use a Python library written in C..

Sure, I may not be proficient in everything, but I try to have a working knowledge of all of the latest popular technologies so that I am not ignorant to what's going on around me. Like others have stated, 30min is all you need to really grasp what's going on in coffee script. Is that kind of time investment really that challenging to come by?

We are all online friends and friends ought to warn each other when they see their friend is doing something stupid (I really think writing any script longer than 20 lines in JavaScript instead of CoffeeScript is stupid).

I think OP will get by without your career advice pretty well.

I realy don't want to get into a virtual pointless argument, but just out of curiosity: do you know CoffeeScript? Because it's very strange to me that someone might be against using CoffeeScript and condemning it like that (its debugging is worse than JS, but on every other front it's the clear winner). if you're not familiar with it, I suggest you take a look at CoffeeScript.org to see how and why it differs from JavaScript.