DEV Community

Discussion on: JavaScript is almost pythonic

Collapse
 
zzzzbov profile image
Timothy

You've just described CoffeeScript.

Collapse
 
aspittel profile image
Ali Spittel

True, CoffeeScript is heavily influenced by Python! I do think it usually causes more pain than its worth to add something like that in though.

Thread Thread
 
muresanandrei1 profile image
Muresan Andrei

Isn't CoffeeScript influenced by Ruby?

Thread Thread
 
aspittel profile image
Ali Spittel

According to wikipedia: "CoffeeScript is a programming language that transcompiles to JavaScript. It adds syntactic sugar inspired by Ruby, Python and Haskell in an effort to enhance JavaScript's brevity and readability."

The indentation is definitely Pythonic.

Collapse
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Yep, CoffeeScript is a good idea except that this kind of syntax-driven transpiling never seems to be worth it. Maybe pre-ES2015 but I can't imagine CoffeeScript living much longer besides legacy.

Thread Thread
 
brentsmind profile image
Brent

I disagree. If you have to use a build step to convert JavaScript into older JavaScript to get all of it's best features using another syntax is just as okay. Use Elm use ClojureScript use CoffeeScript use whatever you're comfortable with.

Thread Thread
 
ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I agree with you, but what I was trying to say is that with JS's improvements, CoffeeScript isn't offering as much. A lot of the benefits are now native, so the CoffeeScript community shrinks and the tradeoffs of fewer people understanding it are no longer worth the trouble.

Elm and ClojureScript bring more than syntactic sugar to the table. Same with TypeScript.

Use CoffeeScript if that's what you like, but I think the benefits have faded of late.

Thread Thread
 
brentsmind profile image
Brent

I haven't really used it myself but the community seems to have some really dedicated people. I believe they just released a new version to put it more in line with modern js.

So I'd hate to stop a potential user from trying it because they read this and didn't think it was worth a glance.

The JS comminity owes them a lot cause es6 wouldn't be what it is without coffeescript so hopefully they keep doing innovative stuff that ends up coming over to us.

Thread Thread
 
slmyers profile image
Steven Myers

The JS comminity owes them a lot cause es6 wouldn't be what it is without coffeescript so hopefully they keep doing innovative stuff that ends up coming over to us.

I think this is a little off the mark. This thread was discussed the influencing factors for coffeescript and this post showed how js is similar to a coffeescript influence (python). Personally, I think it's more accurate to thank python for doing innovative stuff that "ends up coming over to us". Repositories like this highlight how cs is waning.