Smooth CoffeeScript

http://issuu.com/autotelicum/docs/smooth_coffeescript

by telemachos • 15 years ago

64 16 15 years ago

issuu.com

autotelicum4• 15 years ago

The book's homepage is at: http://autotelicum.github.com/Smooth-CoffeeScript/

telemachos2• 15 years ago

Thanks for the book. I just found the Github book and was coming back here to link there as well.

The Github link has a much more straightfoward download link. If anyone with mod powers stops by, please edit the URL for this post to point there instead of Issuu.

sheffield• 15 years ago

The killer feature of http://eloquentjavascript.net/ is the console, where you can run and modify the examples, and do the exercises. Do you plan an interactive HTML version?

autotelicum4• 15 years ago

Several of the examples in "smooth" are quite different from "eloquent" and use a http or websocket server, so they require the node.js runtime environment and can not run only in a browser. The setup I use is to have the text next to me on a tablet and a text editor that can run CoffeeScript directly on my laptop. It also takes know-how and time to produce different versions in EPUB and HTML. I tried some free conversion tools but the results were poor. I would like to fix issues and add material, there is an issue tracker on the project page, where errata and suggestions are welcome.

cgbystrom• 15 years ago

Nice. Would be great if it was available in EPUB format.

jarin• 15 years ago

I tried converting to epub and it lost all the code formatting.

drivebyacct2• 15 years ago

Am I missing something? The default area where the book loads is way to small to read anything, and it may be the fact that I'm so zoomed out, but this looks like it was scanned it or something. Blurry and not leveled...

Direct link to a PDF: http://autotelicum.github.com/Smooth-CoffeeScript/Smooth%20C...

erikpukinskis• 15 years ago

If you enable flash and click "Click to read" it'll go into fullscreen mode. Not exactly intuitive...

guywithabike• 15 years ago

It's also just plain frustrating to read. The first page turn moves the page controls over, and then every subsequent page turn takes almost an entire second for its goofy animation to finish.

Why do so many e-reader/document-reader sites/apps insist on replicating old paper books buy forcing you to pause and watch a dumb animation on every page turn?

dylanrw• 15 years ago

This is going to be a great read.

jjm• 15 years ago

There is some crazy stuff going on here. Awesome examples and really opened up my mind on taking advantage of what CoffeeScript allows.

Ruudjah• 15 years ago

Is there an html version?

TrevorBurnham• 15 years ago

I'm a fan of Eloquent JavaScript. In my book on CoffeeScript (http://pragprog.com/titles/tbcoffee/coffeescript), I recommend it as a resource for readers who want a thorough introduction to JavaScript. So obviously, I think it's pretty damn cool that someone ported his book to CoffeeScript (albeit with modified examples). The inclusion of Underscore.js as a standard library is, I think, also quite sensible.

Of course, there's a fundamental philosophical difference between my book and Smooth CoffeeScript, which is highlighted on the book's front page:

> Why no JavaScript? Because it is difficult enough to learn one programming language at a time. This book does not assume knowledge of JavaScript or another language.

I, on the other hand, think that it's important to understand JavaScript in order to work with CoffeeScript, and that CoffeeScript is not well-suited to being a first programming language. The situation will improve as tools for debugging CoffeeScript become available, but even then, it's unlikely that you'll use CoffeeScript for a real project without reading documentation (and code) for libraries written in JavaScript.

But hey, I'm happy to see anything that gets more people hooked on CoffeeScript. :)

autotelicum4• 15 years ago

Smooth CoffeeScript is a book about programming, problem solving, looking into how algorithms work, and learning from it. Those things really appealed to me in Eloquent JavaScript.

Smooth CoffeeScript uses CoffeeScript because it can express the code much more clearly than JavaScript, but the book could have been written in another language; Python for example.

I created it because it was a book I would like to read. It is great that there is now a handful of resources so you can pick what suits you best when you decide to learn CoffeeScript.

Smooth CoffeeScript

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