Jan 31, 2012

CoffeeScript Love Selected as DZone MVB



CoffeeScript Love has been chosen for DZone's MVB (Most Valuable Blogger) program! Yes, I know the name says Blogger not Blog, but let's be honest: As happy as I am to see my picture in a grid with Martin Fowler, all the props go to the real hero, the "little language."

The editors at DZone have clearly figured out what we already know, namely that CoffeeScript is seriously great. Hopefully, syndication of this blog will help CoffeeScript build even more momentum. Congrats, CoffeeScript!

Jan 30, 2012

CoffeeScript in Basecamp Next

37Signals published details today about the next generation of its flagship Basecamp product, with impressive statistics revealing that its codebase is almost as much CoffeeScript as Ruby. Astonishingly, this seems not to be even as high a percentage as it might be. DHH (David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails) says in the post's comments that he is not a heavy user of client-side MVC frameworks such as Backbone.js:
I still don’t like client-side MVC from a developer’s standpoint, which is why - comparably speaking - there’s only a tiny amount of it in Basecamp Next. But there are indeed places where it makes a lot of sense, such as a calendar, for example.
 He also reveals that the vast majority of view rendering is still server-side Ruby:
... we use Eco for our client-side templates, but we only have 24 of those versus hundreds of regular ERB templates. Half the client-side templates relate to our new calendar.
Very interesting stuff. CoffeeScript Love can't wait to hear more about CoffeeScript and the internals of Basecamp Next.

Jan 24, 2012

"I Never Want to Write Plain JavaScript Again"

These are the words of legendary open-source JavaScript developer Sam Stephenson in a recent talk on CoffeeScript at FOWA 2011. The 45-minute presentation (video is here, slides are here) chronicles the evolution of higher-level approaches to JavaScript, including GWT, Pyjamas, Objective-J, and finally CoffeeScript. If you've been on the fence with CoffeeScript, this could be the one to tip you. If you're just learning CoffeeScript, it is a great, thoughtful, well-paced introduction to the language. Sam structures the rest of the talk around "10 Things I Love About CoffeeScript."

Here are Sam's top ten favorite things about CoffeeScript:

  1. Function Syntax
  2. Significant Whitespace
  3. Bare Objects
  4. Everything's an Expression
  5. Comprehensions
  6. Classes & Inheritance
  7. Bound Functions
  8. Conditionals
  9. Destructuring Assignment
  10. String Syntax

Jan 15, 2012

Alex MacCaw Interview on The Changelog

Even if you follow Spine.js and Alex MacCaw closely (as I do), this recent interview with him on The Changelog is a good opportunity to hear the backstory on many of his design decisions. He discusses Spine and Backbone, Eco and Mustache, and weighs in on the debate about emulating native look-and-feel in mobile Web apps. Naturally he doesn't fail to mention how much he values CoffeeScript and admires Jeremy Ashkenas. It's fairly short (20 minutes), but definitely worth a listen.

Also at The Changelog is this epic interview with HTML5 Boilerplate creator Paul Irish. I consider it an overflowing grab-bag of goodies for anyone who develops for the browser.

Jan 1, 2012

CodeMirror CoffeeScript Mode

CodeMirror is an open-source, extensible, full-featured code editor library for the browser that supports a number of different languages--including CoffeeScript!

The Underscore.js Reference in the online book Smooth CoffeeScript uses CodeMirror for its interactive code listings. Another nice example is this demo of Calculize in CoffeeScript by Jeff Pickhardt, who created the CoffeeScript mode for CodeMirror.