>Dude, long post, little content.

I find sometimes you have to repeat yourself a lot before people will understand a point.

> That's a subjective claim that I also think is untrue.

It's obviously my opinion, and I can't speak for the developer....but it's fairly accurate.

To say it's "untrue" it's just plain wrong, and if you're going to suggest that it's "untrue", you should offer your opinion as to what is "true".

Anyway, it's perhaps a simplification and incomplete, but it's demonstrably true.

If you go and read the docs for Coffeescript and what the creator has said, here is the general point made:

- Coffeescript is designed to make Javascript easier and faster to write.

- Coffeescript is designed to reduce some of the headaches associated with Javascript, and make it more expressive.

Those are the immediate goals, but the reason behind those goals is to increase productivity. Increased productivity is WHY those things are desirable.

Nobody just wants to type more JS code per minute for no reason at all.

>CS doesn't have any new paradigms

Well for one, that's not entirely accurate.

For one, In CS everything is an expression, which is not the case in JS.

However, even if we were to grant that point...it's moot.

See, this is why I have to repeat myself. Although it seems despite debunking this misconception over and over you still managed to maintain it.

CS isn't meant to be the latest and greatest language, or exist in a vacuum. If that was the point, why implement it on top of Javascript and put so much effort into making it compatible with Javascript?

CS doesn't introduce new "paradigms" (at least the kind you are getting at) because that's not what it's FOR.

CS isn't supposed to exist independent of Javascript, it exists to generate Javascript.

The fact of the matter is, for some reason some people don't analyze technology based on objective reasoning about it's merits.

In the Javascript world, jQuery and Coffeescript are prominent victims of this.

There's lots of reasons to dislike jQuery....but by far people hate on it for reasons entirely removed from facts.

Same with Coffeescript.

Remarking that Coffeescript doesn't optimize code is a complete non-sequitur.

More importantly this stupid implication that "syntactic sugar" is somehow pointless.

Haters always make some smug implication about CS being "only syntactic sugar", as if that's some sort of actual critique or something.

What these people don't understand is:

Syntactic sugar is a method whereby languages are improved.

There's nothing wrong with syntactic sugar, and it is very much a powerful and useful thing.

I can write list comprehensions in Cofeescript....you can't do that in vanilla JS unless you want your code to only run on certain engines.

That is one example of the power of "syntactic sugar".

People get confused because they mistake it for simple examples of syntactic sugar where

bar (x, foo(x, y, z))

is created from: foobar( x )

In that case the transformation is useful, but so sleight it's questionable whether the effort is worth it.

...but that's not what we're talking about.

>This analogy holds only when you're talking about (a) a screwdriver + (b) a hammer, i.e. totally different tools, with totally different use-cases.

YES... and that is what we are talking about. At least it's sure what I'm talking about.

When you compare Coffeescript to things like:

- Libraries - Code optimizing tools - Debugging tools - etc

Those are totally different tools with totally different use-cases.

If I'm curt it's because I'm sick of this nonsense every time CS comes up.

There's a few people who make actually informed points either for or against it based on facts and technical merits...

...and thens there's a bunch of techno-hipsters who either put it down or blindly adopt it without knowing what they are talking about. (not saying you are in this group, but read the comments any time CS is mentioned and you will see this group)

    When you compare Coffeescript to things like:
    - Libraries - Code optimizing tools 
    - Debugging tools - etc
    Those are totally different tools with 
    totally different use-cases

There's a world of difference between how typical projects are built in C++ versus Java, or in Java versus Ruby/Python, or in Ruby/Python versus Haskell.

And this has more to do with the capabilities of the runtimes, the introspection capabilities available, the available libraries, the debugging tools, the quality of the read-eval loop, the smartness of the compiler/VM to handle errors -- and a lot less to do with whether semicolons are optional.

You're trying to divorce these assets from the job of a programming language, or from the happiness experienced when using said language, but they are not divorceable, just as you can't separate a language from the compilers available (i.e. it's factually incorrect to say that languages themselves are not slow, as most languages in use have been influenced by known compiler/VM optimizations).

And my point about libraries does hold -- to use Rails, you need Ruby, and can't use it from Python because you would need a clone that's built for Python's capabilities, as while the type system is very similar, there are lots of differences (e.g. namespaces, scoping rules, decorators versus anonymous blocks, functions as first-class citizens versus Proc#call, mixins versus multiple-inheritance, method-dispatching itself, etc...).

But Javascript/CS are so similar that they can share libraries effortlessly. CS will never have the benefits of libraries, as those libraries will be usable from Javascript.

    If I'm curt it's because I'm sick of 
    this nonsense every time CS comes up

Dude, if it makes you happier, more productive, do whatever floats your boat. Tickling your aesthetic senses is a perfectly valid point for using a tool. I was just expressing my opinion on the matter.

And truth is I couldn't care less if it is being adopted as a default in Rails. Heck, I've been proven wrong before, and it may actually work out for the best.