CoffeeScript2 - A Redesign of the CoffeeScript Compiler

https://github.com/michaelficarra/CoffeeScript2

by netbyte • 14 years ago

76 42 14 years ago

chime• 14 years ago

This looks like a great project. Wish I would have known about the Kickstarter campaign for it sooner. Can't wait to try it out.

jashkenas2• 14 years ago

Very much looking forward to seeing how this turns out. To view a list of some of the public-facing things Michael wants to change, take a look here:

https://github.com/michaelficarra/coffee-of-my-dreams

GeZe• 14 years ago

For those who don't want to wait, most of the public-facing changes listed there are already in LiveScript (http://gkz.github.com/LiveScript/) - though with a few more (in my opinion well justified) incompatibilities.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 14 years ago

He wants to remove semicolons except where absolutely necessary?

Is he nuts? The compiled output shouldn't be relying on an error-correction feature. Especially since it might break minifiers and validators.

michaelficarra5• 14 years ago

That would just be a default in my fork. Since the output will be massively configurable, you can use any style you can imagine, including a single line with all the braces and semicolons and whitespace you want. See http://oai.cwi.nl/oai/asset/10876/10876D.pdf for a resource on defining grammars for AST to CST transformations.

mistercow6• 14 years ago

I'm not sure I agree that ASI is an "error-correction feature". Die-hard always-semicolon advocates certainly would like to paint it that way, but I think that may be rewriting history a bit.

ajross2• 14 years ago

I recognize the minifier significance. But wait, there are validators (!?) that choke on valid (!) syntax?

michaelficarra5• 14 years ago

I just want to make sure people know that those changes are bound for a fork once I reach full compliance with the current compiler. The project's one and only goal is to implement the language exactly as Jeremy's compiler does, but be prettier underneath (more extensible, versatile, configurable, robust, etc).

sirclueless• 14 years ago

Forgive me for being skeptical, but it seems to me that CoffeeScript is going the way of Lisp: a language by hackers for hackers, with way too many incompatible implementations because each implementer has their own pet features that must be included.

yuchi2• 14 years ago

There's already a production ready transpiler, and a big bunch of production code to test against every new transpiler. Why do you think this is going to be a reason for fragmentation?

And, by the way, coffeescript is not intended to be a language for hackers (I mean, only for hackers) but for Ruby programmers moving to javascript, JS programmers looking for a more terse syntax and programmers with an eye for terseness.

In my opinion it has only two big flaws that need to be targeted by new transpilers: 1) for --> each 2) parens free chainable syntax.

mistercow6• 14 years ago

Well, one reason that it could go that way is that the attitude that the maintainers has had toward feature-creep is "just make your own fork!" That's why we now have more dialects than we can shake a stick at, but it has kept the main branch from becoming PHP.

charliesome• 14 years ago

Please stop saying 'transpiler'. The CoffeeScript compiler is no less deserving of the term than any other compiler.

jashkenas2• 14 years ago

Whoops -- I think you're missing a big part of the point of compiling into "standard" JavaScript. Not only is CoffeeScript code fully compatible with any JS library ... it's also compatible with code generated by any version of the compiler, and with code generated by alterna-compilers like Coco, and eventually this project as well. The semantic compatibility exists at the "plain 'ol" JS level.

streptomycin• 14 years ago

That only solves part of the problem. It's still a big pain to have different syntax dialects and different tools that have to be used for different projects that are ostensibly written with the same language, even if they are compatible after you compile them to JS.

pistoriusp• 14 years ago

I don't think it's fair that he should be allowed to use the name "CoffeeScript 2."

I feel that it implies that it's an official project, but it's actually a re-implementation and separate project.

And if they're not backwards compatible it could lead to a ton of confusion and a fragmented language.

I think if you want your own project then you should at the very least get your own name.

mistercow6• 14 years ago

I would be surprised if he didn't have Ashkenas's blessing on the name, since he's been the second biggest contributor to the main CoffeeScript project.

michaelficarra5• 14 years ago

Fear not. The re-implementation will be completely backwards compatible. It just a smoother compilation pipeline, and adds some output configurability. But regardless, Jeremy and I have decided it would be best to change the name.

jQueryIsAwesome• 14 years ago

I will suggest a few alternatives: Winescript, Caffèscript, Browniscript, Shortscript and Rubyscript.

emp_• 14 years ago

When I saw the empty repo (just with the README) and before reading the kickstarter page or comments here, I thought it was another vapor.js-like joke as a compliment to the original compiler, which IMO does it very well.

desireco42• 14 years ago

I am ok with anything @jashkenas blesses.

Thanks Groupon and others for supporting this, I would agree with commenters that name is confusing.

kristianp• 14 years ago

Here is a relevant groupon blog post: https://engineering.groupon.com/2012/javascript/looking-forw...

How about multiple backend support? Perhaps then someone could add a dart or NaCl backend.

michaelficarra5• 14 years ago

I hadn't seen that blog post. Thanks for that.

almost2• 14 years ago

CoffeeScript relies heavily on the underlying JavaScript semantics (which is one of the main reasons it's so useful: It's Just JavaScript) so other backends would most likely be a lot harder to do than the JS one.

pbiggar• 14 years ago

The phrase "proper compiler-design principles" really gets on my nerves for some reason. It instantly makes me doubt the ability of the person saying it. It seems to say "I've heard of Lex/Yacc and once glanced at the Dragon Book".

Anyway, I gather the OP is a coffeescript core contributor, so my default opinion is probably wrong in this case, hopefully.

tferris2• 14 years ago

This and nine more CoffeeScript derivates* from people who rather like to fragment a landscape with marginal improvements instead of supporting the leading pack are the reasons that CoffeScript hasn't reach critical mass and will fail as a standard.

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

johnfn• 14 years ago

CoffeeScript hasn't attained critical mass? It's the 10th most popular language on github[1], over a decade younger than all the other contenders, and growing quickly.

Even if CoffeeScript was as niche as you argue, I'm not convinced that that would have any bearing on its success. CoffeeScript doesn't need a wide community to achieve success because it compiles to and is completely interoperable with JavaScript, the most popular programming language.

[1] https://github.com/languages

tferris2• 14 years ago

Regarding the front end side the CoffeeScript adoption is high and mainly driven by Rails but if you look at the back end it's different: CoffeeScript could not established with Node (most npm packages are in plain JS) and mixing Coffee and JS on the backend does not really work out (it's possible though).

rjd• 14 years ago

So... I hope this isn't the future of updates to open source projects... crowd fund us or we won't do it... starting to see a pattern projects using this technique (albeit none are out rightly saying them won't its just implied)... not sure its a healthy development myself.

tinco• 14 years ago

It is an excellent development. It means developers can finally start to live from _independent_ open source development. This is not and never will be a replacement for hobby opensource, because that is done by developers who just want to do it, it would not make sense for them to threaten to not do it if we don't give them money. This is for the people who contribute to opensource, but also have a day job developing low-impact closed source commercial software, who don't have time or energy for large refactorings and rewrites.

"Crowd fund us or we won't do it" sure is a lot better than "We won't do it".

CoffeeScript2 - A Redesign of the CoffeeScript Compiler

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