Coffeescript

[DaddyHoggy]

I thought this might be of interest to would be OXP writers who are struggling with Javascript: http://coffeescript.org/

[Kaks]

By giving them a different language to figure out??

Oh well, it takes all sorts I suppose... If anyone actually uses coffeescript for their oxp, it'd be interesting to know I suppose... though creating 'compiled coffeescript' sure looks like a complicated way of writing javascript code...

[DaddyHoggy]

I know where you're coming from Kaks, but some people might like to try coffeescript as an alternative but should still end up with valid javascript at the end.

[Kaks]

Well, the syntax doesn't resemble many programming languages I'm familiar with, but as long as it helps people, I'm all for it!

[Gimbal Locke]

Well, the syntax doesn't resemble many programming languages I'm familiar with, but as long as it helps people, I'm all for it!

It looks a bit like Prolog and Erlang syntax (which I personally prefer over C-style syntax).

[Gimbal Locke]

Two links which may be interesting:

* List of languages that compile to JS, I was surprised on how long the list is. (But since JavaScript seems to be becoming the standard client language Everywhere pretty fast, this might have been to be expected??)

* JavaScript: The World's Most Misunderstood Programming Language argues that JavaScript is "Lisp in C's Clothing" (meaning: a functional language with curly braces syntax, with arrays in stead of lists & objects in stead of property lists).

Edit: corrected the link - thanks Ahruman for pointing this out!

[JensAyton]

List of languages that compile to JS, I was surprised on how long the list is. (But since JavaScript seems to be becoming the standard client language Everywhere pretty fast, this might have been to be expected??)

Correct link

Yep. This is also known as the “assembly language for the web” meme; if you want your language/runtime environment to run on the web, and you aren’t Adobe, compiling to JavaScript is the way to do it. And now, even if you are Adobe, since Flash is in the process of transitioning to a JS authoring tool.

There are some pretty impressive things out there, like a C++ and OpenGL game engine compiled to JavaScript and WebGL with only minor modifications.

One of the goals of the upcoming ES6/harmony specification is to make it a better target for this sort of thing, most notably by adding a lower-level memory model. The competition for JS performance is still very hot, and even Internet Explorer has been playing a strong game recently.