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Lets just say I need HTML/CSS/JS, how do I know which components/frameworks/libraries are a must have? They all use the underlying tech (unless, and this could be true as I'm very rusty, they enable something fundamentally different)

The only comparison I can make is the difference between ASM and a high level language. I could literally (physically?) see the improved productivity in my workload as I switched from x86 to C. Is there the same level of shift between JS and coffeescript?



> Is there the same level of shift between JS and coffeescript?

Opinion :

I've never used coffeescript, nor have I really been tempted to. JS isn't a conceptually difficult language, and the wrapper libraries (e.g. jQuery) make day-to-day work a snap.

Given that, I can't really see the rationale behind a syntactic sugar layer on top of a mature and straightforward ecosystem. Even back when I wrote Ruby full time, coffeescript felt more annoying than intriguing.

> The only comparison I can make is the difference between ASM and a high level language. I could literally (physically?) see the improved productivity in my workload as I switched from x86 to C.

Oh wow, it's nothing like that at all. JS is already a high level language after all. Syntactic sugar won't be that much of a boon unless you're already proficient with the languages that inspired CS.

Personally, I'm orders of magnitude more productive with C than x86. If I thought I'd see even a fraction of that productivity gain by switching to [insert anything here] I would switch to [insert anything here]. I mean that sincerely.




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