Almost reminds of the old QBasic or Visual Basic.

Now, I have to use Python and/or Ruby. Using the C/C++/C# class of languages like Java(Script) always gives me a case of schizophrenia.

I like quick, easy and dirty. Just get err, done!

Programs writing programs?

…How perverse.

I would rather like a language with C# syntax, because the worst problem with JS is OOP. I have written some LIBs using OOP for my Website but it always comes down to more code than necessary. Having typified variables at least in the first stage (before translating into JS) could enable the compiler to at least find some errors.
In general I like the idea of developing a language that is translated into JS though, because there won’t be a replacement of JS for long. Having a compiler that compiles into JS also enables you not to care about different browsers because the compiler could include dynamic browser checking which allows to work around differences between different browsers.

Ugh, it’s so ugly. Who on earth came up with the idea of using colons for assignment? And reversing the order of if statements?

I think it would take me longer to figure out how to write “hello world” in this thing than write an entire website in pure javascript.

Looking at the included picture, I find the right hand side easier to read than the left. Javascript may have headaches, but at least the syntax is easy to handle. WTF were they thinking with colons and that weird ordering of statements.

If you really want to have an intermediary language for Javascript, use Pyjamas, it takes Python code and produces Javascript. There’s no need to make yet another scripting language when you already have some really nice ones (especially one with such an odd syntax, there’s a reason most languages follow certain formats)

Personally, I find Javascript to be a very powerful language to work with. It has it’s quirks (determining scope can be mindbending), but with the addition of libraries like Prototype you can do all sorts of cool things. If you are just doing basic things, it’s not even that complicated of a syntax.

the right colon is much clearer to understand

JavaScript itself is a pretty nice language, the DOM API however is a shambles, and as most people only come across JS in the browser then they assume it’s JS’s fault. Check out Douglas Crockford’s article http://javascript.crockford.com/javascript.html for more info on JavaScript itself.

@Mutant If you’re just after hacking a few things together on a web page, then I’d suggest using jQuery or MooTools, which abstract away the browser inconsistencies and give you a nice, clean and well documented API to work with.

I quite like the idea of CoffeeScript, though the period block closing is a bit confusing. It would be really cool to see a C# style yield/IEnumerable feature added.

You have a point about DOM I must admit. The fact that it’s so hard to simply retrieve the page source of an iframe from the parent page is rather annoying, as well as the fact that getting the CSS styles of an element. The latter will usually just alert as a blank. Having to load an entirely new stylesheet dynamically is a tad irritating.

As for JQuery, I know a tad and have actually been looking into learning more recently. I love how versatile JQuery is when it comes to finding the right part of a page you want to change. With JavaScript, finding a particular part of a page can be done easily with .split() and such, but once you’ve used methods like split, you can no longer change its value dynamically. JQuery remedies these flaws quite nicely. Visual effects like fadeout are nice too. :D

The examples they give are really, really bad. For instance Javascript will auto assign variables, you don’t need to explicitly say var every time and the loop example is atrocious! A real comparison would be:

Assignment:
number = 42; vs number: 42

Functions:
function square(x) { return x*x };
vs: square: x => x * x.

Array comprehensions:
var result = [ math.cube(i) for each (i in list) ];
vs: cubed_list: math.cube(num) for num in list.

How exactly is CoffeeScript cleaner?

Wow…just WOW…a language to create another language. That is stupid. Now what if you have some JS code not generated by this thing, can it reverse engineer it back to something half way readable in its syntax. Just grab a book and learn to code properly, don’t piggy back off of garbage that will be fast to create 1st time around, because these are the ones that are a pain to maintain.
JS syntax is not much different from Java Syntax, especially DOM.