CoffeeScript: Accelerated JavaScript Development

http://www.pragprog.com/titles/tbcoffee/coffeescript#

by shawndumas • 15 years ago

76 46 15 years ago

pragprog.com

elliot42• 15 years ago

For those unfamiliar with CoffeeScript: http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/

EdwardMSmith2• 15 years ago

Hmm, no beta. Love to see a sample chapter.

shawndumas3• 15 years ago

Agreed; but with an availability date of 2011-06-20 we should see something soon.

TrevorBurnham10• 15 years ago

The book's page has just been updated with a few excerpts: http://pragprog.com/titles/tbcoffee/coffeescript

Criticisms welcome. We're aware of some technical issues (most notably, there's no syntax highlighting for the CoffeeScript snippets), which will be fixed shortly.

TrevorBurnham10• 15 years ago

I'm the author.

I was planning to post this link later, when the book becomes available. I can't share any details yet, but look for an announcement next week. I run @coffeescript on Twitter, so you'll definitely stay updated if you follow me there.

shawndumas3• 15 years ago

Get the "add to wish-list" button working on the pragprog.com page. Please and thanks!

TrevorBurnham10• 15 years ago

Thanks, I've let the PragProg folks know. There are a few other updates pending to that page as well.

Incidentally, you could add it to your wish list on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/CoffeeScript-Accelerated-Development-T...

gsiener• 15 years ago

So here's a related question. If someone wanted to snag a developer that really understood coffeescript and js development, where should they be looking?

MatthewPhillips• 15 years ago

Hacker News sounds like a pretty good place. Start an Ask HN.

icey• 15 years ago

The "Who's hiring" thread will be created on Sunday. I'd try posting there.

rjrodger• 15 years ago

Go to jsconf and nodeconf in Portland next week.

danenania3• 15 years ago

Someone who really understands js can pick up coffeescript in a few hours, so don't pass on a good js developer just because they haven't yet made the jump.

geraldalewis3• 15 years ago

I don't completely agree -- I feel like CoffeeScript shares as much in common with Ruby and Python as it does with JS. I'd say a good developer would be the best fit for a CS position; depending on your deployment platform, I can almost see a case where being an embedded JS programmer might actually cause issues. If all you understand is EcmaScript, all you'll write is EcmaScript. Despite its tagline being "It's just JavaScript", it's actually much more.

dekz• 15 years ago

Hang out in IRC and you will be able to determine who's worth their value. freenode #nodejs #coffeescript

bluehavana• 15 years ago

Could try jobs.github.com. Coffee script will also be a semi-default in Rails 3.1. A Ruby and good JS person should be able to pickup CoffeeScript in a few hours though.

InclinedPlane• 15 years ago

http://stackoverflow.com/tags/coffeescript/topusers

geraldalewis3• 15 years ago

This is really great to see -- correct me if I'm wrong, but Trevor must be one of the biggest contributors to CoffeeScript. It's great to have someone so intimately familiar with the project author one of its first books.

TrevorBurnham10• 15 years ago

I'll correct you. :)

Code-wise, I'm only a minor contributor to CoffeeScript. I wouldn't be the right person to write a book on how the CoffeeScript compiler works. (Thankfully, some of those people agreed to be technical reviewers for the book.) But I have been an active participant in the language's community from early on.

geraldalewis3• 15 years ago

I think I mostly recognize you from CoffeeScript's #issues on Github, where your comments are cogent and insightful.

rmason2• 15 years ago

Trevor, Let me know if your book will include a simple CRUD app written in CoffeeScript using Node.js. That alone would gain you a few more sales.

TrevorBurnham10• 15 years ago

Hmm, I'm afraid it's a bit late to add another project to the book (there is a Node project, but it doesn't use persistence), so how about if I write this and post it somewhere else? Would you prefer MySQL or MongoDB?

rmason2• 15 years ago

Thank you! For the widest possible appeal I would choose MySQL.

jamesbritt• 15 years ago

What experience do people have with other tools for generating javascript?

https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang...

I'm wondering how they compare, and what people have to say.

TrevorBurnham10• 15 years ago

Many of those tools (including Coco, a CoffeeScript fork which is, objectively, more feature-rich) provide features to help manage asynchronous control flow (that is, to make callbacks look more like linear code). These proposals were rejected in CoffeeScript (see https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/issues/350) because they take the language too far away from the underlying JavaScript—in particular, CoffeeScript code would no longer necessarily have the same order as the JavaScript output.

For heavily async code, those other tools are well worth looking at.

gruseom• 15 years ago

We use Parenscript heavily. It's great. The full power of Lisp macros on top of efficient JS.

kennymeyers• 15 years ago

I still don't understand why I would want to use CoffeeScript when I can just use JavaScript.

aaronbrethorst• 15 years ago

Assembler and C.

Java and Scala.

Erb and Haml.

CSS and Less/Sass.

Edit: Walking and driving.

unshift• 15 years ago

Asm/C and Java/scala are unfair comparisons, since they're totally different languages with different structures and idioms.

I just started using CoffeeScript for a project of mine and while it did clean up the messy look of the Javascript, it doesn't improve much upon Javascript feature-wise. I felt like I was still writing Javascript, it just looked a little better.

jessedhillon2• 15 years ago

> CSS and Less/Sass

This is the only comparison on your list that is remotely appropriate. In no meaningful way is it true that

  CoffeeScript:Javascript :: C:Assembler

Javascript is not a low-level language resembling a primitive machine interface, and CoffeeScript mostly provides syntactic sugar, not new semantics or a different paradigm.

rgbrgb3• 15 years ago

Can't wait for beginner programmer books in CoffeeScript.

TrevorBurnham10• 15 years ago

Unfortunately, it isn't really possible to understand CoffeeScript without understanding JavaScript, so it's not a very good choice of first language. JavaScript is. So, the book assumes at least a beginner-level understanding of JavaScript.

rgbrgb3• 15 years ago

I have to disagree with you there. As there is a 1-to-1 mapping between CoffeeScript and JavaScript, I'd say that they are equally hairy first languages but the former has nicer syntax. The beginner documentation and workflow just isn't there with CoffeeScript yet. I'm actually not totally sure why you say that it isn't possible to understand CS without knowing JS. Is it because CS compiles to JS? If that's the case, I'd point out that you definitely don't have to know bytecode to learn Java.

FreshCode• 15 years ago

-1 post it when it's ready, not when you're ready to start promoting it.

shawndumas3• 15 years ago

I, the OP, am not the author. I posted because I was excited.

wsxiaoys• 15 years ago

Just a a question: is there any project trying to wrap the Lua with some ruby-like sugar just like what CoffeeScript do to javascript?

I think that will be fun since Lua's syntax is ... not so sweet i think.

TrevorBurnham10• 15 years ago

Now in beta! Reposted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2507418

CoffeeScript: Accelerated JavaScript Development

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