[statictype]

Everyday there seems to be a new post on HN, complete with inflammatory headline, criticizing Coffeescript in someway because it doesn't work in the exact way the author expected.

There are lots of people throwing in their $0.02 on how the language should work without having joined the mailing list or seen any discussions on the thought process behind its features.

I'm not saying the suggestion made isn't reasonable, but I can understand glib replies like this from the author that don't make too much effort to explain his stance more than 140 characters.

[showell30]

In fairness, Armin (the author the blog post) did engage Jeremy (the author of coffeescript) on this issue over twitter. I wish that he would allow comments on his blog. I also wish that he could engage the broader CS community in a proper forum before dissing the language and/or creating a fork of the language. He's overreacting. This whole blog post apparently started because he had a naming collision with "log" in one of his programs. CS does have a mailing list, but most of the action happens via github issues.

[the_mitsuhiko]

> I wish that he would allow comments on his blog.

Why? Hackernews and reddit exist and everybody is free to send me a mail or contact me on twitter. This way I do not have to moderate any comments or deal with spam.

> I also wish that he could engage the broader CS community in a proper forum before dissing the language and/or creating a fork of the language.

And do what? Duplicating an issue that is already there? Commenting on a dead issue? The author has expressed his unwillingness to deal with this issue so why should I reopen the issue there?

> He's overreacting.

How am I? I wrote a very short blog post about why I think the scoping is bad and how it caused me problems. Many people asked me on Twitter why I think the scoping does not work as good as it should and since I only have 140 characters to explain stuff there I wrote it to my blog. How else should I communicate that?

> CS does have a mailing list, but most of the action happens via github issues.

There is an issue about this topic from a year ago which was closed and the author does not want this to be changed. I am okay with that, a language needs leadership. That does not mean however that other people should not know about this issue when they design the next programming language.

[showell30]

I wish that you would allow comments on your blog, so that folks following your twitter link would be able to see both sides of the issue, but I obviously understand your spam issues, which is why I said "wish" and not "should".

I wish that you would engage the CS community on this topic without the sole agenda of getting this fixed. It's true that the issue was put to rest a while ago, but the decision wasn't made in a vacuum--there was consensus involved. I think it's a little unfair to say that Jeremy "has expressed his unwillingness to deal with this issue"; that makes it sound like he was dismissing you or dismissing further debate on this, when in fact he just told you what had already been decided.

When I say you're overreacting on this issue, it's just my opinion, so don't get too worked up about it. You had a bug. "Log" means two things. IMHO you don't need to fork coffeescript; that would be a gross overreaction, but YMMV.

You are not doing anything wrong by taking the time to write up your opinion in a blog--if I implied that in any way, it was not out of malice; it was just imprecise writing on my part.

[dtf]

For what it's worth, thanks for that detailed article. I've just used Coffeescript for a large-ish WebGL project and had no idea of that behaviour. I got freaked out when I got to the bottom of that first fragment and saw log vs log.

I'm going to keep using Coffeescript, I love it. Maybe this kind of scoping isn't the best decision for modularity and teamwork, but on reflection at least the rules are simple and consistent enough for a single programmer to keep in mind.

[jashkenas]

Blog posts about (and against) CoffeeScript features are great, as is discussion on HN, as is discussion on the issues pages.

In addition, nothing in CoffeeScript is set in stone -- because every script compiled with every version of CoffeeScript is compatible with every other version, we're much more comfortable making changes to the language than we otherwise would be. If you can make the case that this change is a good idea, we'll definitely make it. So feel free to comment on the old issue or open a new one if you wish.

[ryanflorence]

> because every script compiled with every version of CoffeeScript is compatible with every other version, we're much more comfortable making changes to the language than we otherwise would be.

This attitude concerns me. I can't just say "oh, that's CoffeeScript 1.0 stuff, just trash it, the JS still works". I still have to update the CoffeeScript to upgrade the version. There's no less risk in breaking backwards compat with CoffeeScript than any other language.

[rimantas]

  > How else should I communicate that?

Who says you should?

[colin_jack]

> He's overreacting. This whole blog post apparently started because he had a naming collision with "log" in one of his programs

Surprised at that reaction, he's had a problem and he's written an excellent blog post about it.