Live blogging at Full Frontal 2011, where Jeremy Ashkenas is first up, presenting on CoffeScript.

Motivation

Good work is being done inside and outside of the TC39 committee. The next version of JavaScript is an open process, a working mailing list you can get involved with, and there’s a chance to experiment and shape it.

“It’s just JavaScript”: CoffeeScript is not about creating a new language or letting us apply an existing language in a browser.

Bootstrapping

Original version of CoffeeScript was written in Ruby, but as v0.5, it became significant enough to bootstrap it: Ruby builds an initial CoffeeScript compiler, which then compiles the real CoffeeScript compiler. Slightly more complicated, but you get the idea: CoffeeScript is basically written in CoffeeScript.

Language Features

  • No “var”
  • No “function”
  • Significant whitespace

  • Comprehensions: [code] for stooge in list console.log ‘hi ‘ + stooge [/code]

  • Block strings and interpolation (works for regex’s too): [code] “”” An old pond a #{animal} jumps in the sound of water “”” [/code]
  • Object-oriented, and unlike normal prototype stuff, you get to call super.
  • Binding "this" to the actual object with => </ul> ### How it happens Instead of waiting for a standards body or a browser to give you the language, you can roll your own today. CoffeeScript uses Jison for parsing, there's also Pegs if you prefer. A nice tip is "it's okay to cheat"! CoffeeScript uses a strict tokeniser to disambiguate, making the parsing much easier than if it allowed all sorts of ambiguities.