CoffeeScript: less typing, bad readability

Re:CoffeeScript: less typing, bad readability by ricardobeat on Monday September 17, 2012 @04:59PM (#4534863)

Though most examples are not something you'd write normally, this line is what kind of flopped the article for me:

    Given that CoffeeScript doesn’t fix any of the
    fundamental problems of JavaScript

same for a comment here:

    coffeescript doesn't bring much to table

There is so much coffeescript adds that I find these laughable:

    string interpolation 
    multi-line strings
    comprehensions
    guarded loops (hasOwn...)
    easy constructor/prototype definition (class)
    avoiding global leaks/shadowing
    function binding
    splats, defaults
    safe usage of reserved names
    existential operator
    chained comparisons
    READABLE regular expressions

This just off the top of my head. These make a huge difference to writing code everyday. I've been writing CoffeeScript for 90% of my projects in the past 2.5 years and it pretty clearly affected my productivity for the better. I can only conclude that whoever says "coffeescript doesn't add anything" hasn't really used it for work.

Case in point, if you look at the linked article at the end you'll see an update by the author: I actually love CoffeeScript now that I've been writing it for a year.

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Re:CoffeeScript: less typing, bad readability by sktrdie on Monday September 17, 2012 @05:10PM (#4534914)

I totally agree that CoffeeScript brings a lot to the table compared to old feature-less JavaScript. But the author is talking about readability of the language, and not about the features that it has.

The problem that he points out about "Implicit is better than explicit" and "There is more than one way to do it" are quite serious problems that modern languages shouldn't have.

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Re:CoffeeScript: less typing, bad readability by ricardobeat on Monday September 17, 2012 @05:57PM (#4535125)

See quote at the top, last paragraph from the post. His conclusion is that these readability problems swamp everything that coffeescript has to offer, which I think is really not the case - especially considering these are mostly style issues.

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