When I first saw CoffeeScript I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. I mean, it's beautiful to look at (and enjoyable to write). I was positive that it was going to replace JavaScript in my toolbox. Except, for whatever reason, it never did. It may just be because regular old JavaScript is already familiar, but whenever I needed to knock out any client-side code I'd have half the thing written in JS before I'd even think about CoffeeScript.
I guess at the end of the day syntax didn't end up being a killer feature that I needed. I still think CoffeeScript is awesome, but it doesn't solve problems that I can't already solve in JavaScript.
FWIW, I used js2coffee on a 400-line JS file powering an app today and the compiled version of the code (js->coffee->js) was noticeably faster than the straight JS version. The for-in efficiency is probably part of that.
agree. I've never really considered anything about Javascript's syntax to be cumbersome. I've written server-side Ruby and appreciate the syntax...
But two points:
1) The syntax wasn't the only thing that drew me to Ruby.
2) I just don't see an any real need morph my JS code into a similar syntax. Writing JS is pretty easy.
I guess at the end of the day syntax didn't end up being a killer feature that I needed. I still think CoffeeScript is awesome, but it doesn't solve problems that I can't already solve in JavaScript.