Przemek Lewandowski
6 August 2012, 1 min read
CoffeeScript is the youngest child in our technology stack. We have started to use it after Confitura 2012 conference, where one of the speakers had compared JavaScript to Internet browser assembler. This is quite an imaginative comparison.
In a nutshell CoffeeScript is a little language that transcompiles into JavaScript. It’s just a syntax sugar and nothing else. CoffeeScript syntax is very concise - e.g. it uses indents, few standard elements are optional (function calling parentheses, line ending semicolons) and it has many syntax tricks like simple function binding. With all this stuff CS programs look very slim and… very pythonic. We love Python, so we should fall in love with CofeeScript. Of course every rose has its thorns - one of the most common complaints is that CS adds additional step to your building process and it is hard to debug. This is conflict between readability and small technical inconvenience. We chose readability as more important value.
The easiest way to try CS is interactive mode on its homepage - after typing some CS code you should see corresponding JS script.
