coffeescript

hile to learn, adopt and support it, and yet you can't overstate the importance of a good interoperability story unless you can afford to completely ignore the JavaScript ecosystem. See DART.

t interactive book[5] that shows the javascript generated by the constructs in the language, which is also a good resource for discovering idioms to do things that are not obvious in javascript, like creating classes. TypeScript[6] and Dart[7] are both interesting languages with syntax more familiar to Java. There are a lot more languages that compile to javascript that I haven't mentioned[8]. It's possible that GWT and Java are the best fit for you, but don't pigeonhole yourself by thinking that they are the only good options out there. [1] http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas-Crockfor... [2] https://github.com/documentcloud/underscore/blob/master/unde... [3] https://github.com/documentcloud/backbone/blob/master/backbo... [4] http://coffeescript.org/ [5] http://arcturo.github.com/library/coffeescript/02_syntax.htm... [6] http://www.typescriptlang.org/ [7] http://www.dartlang.org/ [8] https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang...

owsers begin to switch over to bytecode interpreters, thus allowing developers to write in any language. Unfortunately we'll probably colonize Mars before JS is displaced from browsers. Take a look at this list of languages that compile to JS: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang... There are tons. I haven't counted, but it looks like there are in excess of a hundred languages there. That suggests that a lot of people really feel the need to replace Javascript. I can't say that I blame them. Variables are global by default. Think about that for a minute. What deranged fiend decided that variables should be global unless prefixed with a keyword? This is one of the weirdest and most unforgivable things I have witnessed in any language, and I'm embarrassed to admit that I briefly programmed COBOL professionally (I was young and I needed the money). The fact that == has implicit type coercion is a huge pain. I know === resolves that, but it's a hassle to try to remember that when I'm programming in 2 or 3 languages at once. I can only think of one other major language that does automatic coercion on equality checks, which is PHP. Say what you will about the pros and cons of PHP, but I think most people would agree that you shouldn't look to it for advice on language design. While the prototype based inheritance system offers some nifty meta programming opportunities, it makes it really hard to debug. Things don't have classes, they just have prototypes. Virtually everything in JS comes out as [object Object]. That's a really handy message when I'm trying to debug a thorny issue! While I appreciate the elegance of making object constructors from regular functions, that makes it possible to run a constructor without putting "new" in front of it. That runs the code from the constructor, but "this" refers to window instead of your new instance. In "Javascript: The Good Parts", Douglas Crockford recommends writing some boilerplate at the top of every constructor to catch this and recall the constructor with new in front of it. That's a clever hack, but I not a fan writing boilerplate at the top of every constructor. Don't even get me started on how callbacks mess with the value of "this". There are some nifty meta programming tricks I can accomplish with that, but 99.9% of the time I want "this" to refer to the object I'm in! Speaking of which, "apply" is pretty nifty (I love T combinators), but I hate that I can't use it on constructors. The hoops I have to jump through to convert an array into arguments for a variadic constructor in JS are absurd. There, rant over. This is what I consider substance. Please list specific grievances and make suggestions when possible. Vague statements about messiness and modernity tell me nothing. In fact, they sound like FUD which is just going to agitate me.

to call that inner variable doc again. Personally one of the reasons I'm in the camp of favouring explicit variable declaration even if it is a bit of a pita when writing little scripts. If cs ever becomes the next jQuery and everyone adopts it to make dealing with js that little less painful I could see demands for 'var' and 'use strict' being introduced. Though cs seems to be perpetually hovering on the cusp of mainstream acceptance. I think he sees less complaining about it as if you're at a level where you write enough code that if affects you, you'll be able to figure out and fix it yourself.