[slexaxton]

Hi, Stripe Developer here.

We have a mostly per-project set of code style and tooling guidelines. Most (if not all) of our larger projects are coffeescript and commonjs based. That's mostly because they all share at least some code. As long as a project is internally consistent and the team agrees with each other, we don't force any specific styles or tools (within reason). We have expertise with the tools we use the most though, so a lot of times the best fit is our own tools.

However, the comparison is a little bit apples and oranges. The JavaScript is optimized for reading, and maximum coherence by outside developers (an example), and the other is a compiled application for execution. The actual _source_ of the checkout project (which is not open-sourced) internally is broken up into neat files and uses modules, etc. It's quite readable for those working on the code, and the output there is generated by a computer and not really intended for humans.

Hope that helps give some insight into our process and reasoning.

[rcsorensen]

What are you using to stitch the modules together? Stitch, browserify, grunt/grunt-contrib and friends, something home grown?

[slexaxton]

This varies from project to project based on needs. The checkout stuff uses sprockets-commonjs, browserify and require.js are used in other projects though. The decision is often made based on the backend (is it already ruby/sprockets?), and the needs of the project (would rebuilding the full file on each change be prohibitive). For the most part though, the build system remains transparent to all but one person (me, these days).

[e12e]

Any plans for open sourcing the source, as well? Why/Why not?

[slexaxton]

Many important parts of checkout are open-sourced via our jQuery.payment plugin [1]. It allows you to build your own checkout flow from component parts. As for open sourcing (capital C) Checkout entirely, we're working hard to provide a high-touch, consistent experience for checking out and we haven't been able to reconcile that with a bunch of small (maybe less thought-out) variations on the same thing floating around. We're always trying to think about ways to make this stuff better, though. We're definitely not against the idea, we just wanna do it right (i.e. allow non-programmers to customize without making things work incorrectly or look bad).

1. https://github.com/stripe/jquery.payment