CoffeeScript: Accelerated JavaScript Development
A new book from The Pragmatic Bookshelf
“JavaScript was never meant to be the most important programming language in the world. It was hacked together in ten days, packing ideas from Scheme and Self into a C-like syntax. Even its name was an awkward fit, referring to a language with little in common besides a few keywords…”
—from the preface by Trevor Burnham
“CoffeeScript is a little language that aims to give you easy access to the good parts of JavaScript: the first-class functions, the hash-like objects, even the much-misunderstood prototype chain. If we do our job right, you’ll end up writing 1/3 less code in order to generate much the same JavaScript you would have written in the first place.”
—from the foreword by Jeremy Ashkenas, creator of CoffeeScript
“A pre-compiler that removes all the unnecessary verbosity of JavaScript and simply makes it a pleasure to write and read. It might not quite be Ruby, but it sure as hell is a lot closer than what we had before. Go, go, coffee!”
—David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails
“One of the smart things about CoffeeScript is that ‘it’s just syntax’, with the same underlying runtime semantics as JavaScript, so you can interoperate with pure JavaScript libraries from CoffeeScript code without issue. Trevor’s work picks up on this design win: It helps readers become better JavaScripters in the process of learning CoffeeScript. What’s more, this book is a blast to read.”
—Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript
“Taking the lessons learned over the last decade from languages like Ruby and Python, CoffeeScript is a language with immense expressive power. CoffeeScript: Accelerated JavaScript Development is your guide to this new language and a must-read for those interested in being productive in JavaScript.”
—Travis Swicegood, author of Pragmatic Version Control using Git
“Trevor serves up a rich blend of language overview and real-world examples, showcasing why I consider CoffeeScript my secret weapon for iOS, Android, and WebOS mobile development.”
—Wynn Netherland, co-host of The Changelog