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COFFEESCRIPT:
jQuery -> $('#entry').focus()
JAVASCRIPT:
jQuery(function () {
$('#entry').focus();
});1. A simple function
Engineering + Creativity
In his book Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida defines a list of creative professions that includes graphic designers, sculptors, architects, and…software writers.
It’s hard to think of a better place to see creativity and engineering than in CoffeeScript, a little language that compiles to JavaScript.
CoffeeScript is beautiful. It’s sensibly designed around syntactic indentation. It adds useful features to JavaScript. Most importantly, it’s a very thin layer over JavaScript. For any line of CoffeeScript, one can easily predict the line of JavaScript that the compiler will emit.
CoffeeScript invents some good ideas and steals many others. The number one source I could identify for the most useful ideas in CoffeeScript? Perl.
Yes, Perl. The language that’s guaranteed to produce an audible gasp if mentioned in civilized programming circles today. Yet for ten solid years, Perl was a petri dish of syntactic innovation. Extended regular expressions, destructuring assignment.
Which is why it’s exciting to see syntactic experimentation happening with such vigor in CoffeeScript.
In these video snippets, you’ll see how JavaScript and CoffeeScript compare.
2. Jasmine’s ‘describe’ function with args
COFFEESCRIPT:
describe "constructor", ->
JAVASCRIPT:
describe("constructor", function () { });
3. The @ syntax for instance properties
COFFEESCRIPT:
beforeEach -> @dish = new Dish 'Steak $18.99'
JAVASCRIPT:
beforeEach(function () { this.dish = new Dish('Steak $18.99'); });
“Everybody shows off
And wants to look presentable
But the fact of the matter
Is that accidents are preventable.” — Buck 65
4. An instance method
COFFEESCRIPT:
add: (dish) -> @dishes.push dish
JAVASCRIPT:
Meal.prototype.add = function(dish) { this.dishes.push(dish); };
5. A full class with constructor
COFFEESCRIPT:
class Money constructor: (rawString) -> @cents = @parseCents rawString
JAVASCRIPT:
Money = (function() { function Money(rawString) { this.cents = this.parseCents(rawString); } return Money; })();
6. Object literal
COFFEESCRIPT:
toJSON: -> title: @title price: @price.toString()
JAVASCRIPT:
function toJSON() { return { title: this.title, price: this.price.toString() }; }
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