Hacker News Reader

Comment by jashkenas | Hacker News Reader

Hey Thomas -- Given your recent CoffeeScript kick, I've been curious if you've ever thought about going fully semicolon-free by taking a stab at a Zepto.coffee. My initial take is that it doesn't make sense, because one of Zepto's goals is to hone the code down to the fewest bytes possible: something that CoffeeScript would make a bit more difficult. Have you considered it?

View on HN

I love CoffeeScript, and we're considering moving the Zepto tests to use it. (We're also using Ruby for our build system, for example, because we like it, and think it's the right tool for the job.)

I think for the library code itself we prefer using JavaScript because in lots of ways it allows very fine-tuned control, one (of many) examples for this is deliberately using == instead of ===.

Interesting. Taking a brief peek through the source, I don't see any "==" comparisons that look like they couldn't just as well be done with "===" -- except for a handful of "== undefined". And of course, that particular check would be done in CoffeeScript with the existential operator. But I'll take your word for it.

I have considered it myself, but quickly dismissed it because, yes, the output would grow considerably.

I love Coffee and would use it for everything, but this is one of those cases where we simply need to squeeze every single byte and scream each time that we have to let one go.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com