Mind blowing Javascript libraries

[S. M. Sohan]

Hello Agile Developers:

Recently, there has been a proliferation of new open source micro-libraries related to Javascript. Here's a shortlist, if you like:

• CoffeeScript
• node.js
• underscore.js
• knockout.js
• Jasmine
• Express, etc.

These libraries/frameworks are gaining a huge amount of attention in the web dev community. If you haven't tried these yet, I would encourage you to take a look and get your mind blown!

Combine NoSQL/Key-Value databases (Redis, MongoDb, Riak) with these and get your already blown mind blown again!

Thanks for your time.

--
Sohan
http://smsohan.com
skype:smsohan | gtalk:sohan39 | cell: 403-714-2673

[nhm tanveer hossain khan]

I've using nodejs and coffee script for a while :) loving it . Looks like nodejs gonna lead the new era :)

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Agile Bangladesh" group.
> To post to this group, send email to agi...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to agilebd+u...@googlegroups.com <agilebd%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>.
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/agilebd?hl=en.
>

--
--
Best Wishes,
nhm tanveer hossain khan (hasan) | Founder
Khadok.com
the passionate restaurant review site
a venture from Well Treat Us



http://www.khadok.com

cell: +880 1713090511
blog: http://hasan.we4tech.com

"work for fun"

[S. M. Sohan]

great!

--
Sohan
http://smsohan.com
skype:smsohan | gtalk:sohan39 | cell: 403-714-2673

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to agilebd+u...@googlegroups.com.

[Shuhel Ahmed]

Undoubtedly nodjs started a new era in web development. This single threaded asynchronous model of working(for developer) make myself think like a ninja. And I love JavaScript. I've seen coffee script, wrote a line or two. It compiles into jsLint compliant  JavaScript ultimately. I did not like it because the syntax of CoffeeScript is designed in such a way that you just do not want to do in JavaScript.

number = 42

This is a local variable in CoffeeScript but if you write it in JavaScript it is a global variable. And, I is advised that you should not write much global variable in JavaScript because this is evil. So in JavaScript it should be

var number = 42, and should be declared on of first.

My point is CoffeeScript is promoting bad coding practice for JavaScript developer.

---

From: nhm tanveer hossain khan <ha...@welltreat.us>
To: "agi...@googlegroups.com" <agi...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2011 11:23 PM
Subject: Re: Mind blowing Javascript libraries

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to agilebd+u...@googlegroups.com.

[S. M. Sohan]

Thanks Shuhel for sharing your views on CoffeeScript. I think the whole point behind CoffeeScript is to take the noise out of Javascript and provide with a compact and pleasing syntax. I am sorry to disagree, but I don't see how it's promoting bad coding practice just by looking into the following example. Declaring a global variable is often not the best thing to do. But one doesn't have to declare such globals in CoffeeScript.

By the way, if you are looking for a readable book on CoffeeScript, here's a quickie: http://arcturo.github.com/library/coffeescript/

Thank you for your time.

--
Sohan
http://smsohan.com
skype:smsohan | gtalk:sohan39 | cell: 403-714-2673

[nhm tanveer hossain khan]

Hi Shuhel bhai,
I guess if you would have taken CoffeeScript as a different language than JavaScript. It would have solved your problem.
Since your example used to produce the following code in JS -
(function() {
  var var1;
  var1 = 1;
}).call(this);

So you can see it's not only following standard moreover the best practices (like scoping)

I'm loving coffee script, less and sass (for css) because all those let me write compact, readable script.
i would suggest you to use coffee script for one of your projects then let us know your experience :) i'm sure you gonna love it ;)

[Raisul Kabir]

I wanted to share my personal views about CoffeeScript.

As far as I have seen CoffeeScript, it's beautiful. Specially the javascript code it produces is mind blowing. Very very beautiful.

But, CoffeeScript is not something in my reading list in furthest corner. I don't think I'm going to study coffeescript sometime soon.

The reason being, I'm a PHP and .net programmer, I have been using the coding style of C/C++ sort of. The coding style of Ruby or Python is I'm not much familiar with. So, before writing CoffeeScript, I would prefer that I have fluency in Ruby at least. Otherwise, it is going to be a big pain.

At first, when I saw CoffeeScript, I revolted. Like, Smarty in PHP, why on earth I'm going to learn another language to write Javascript when I can write Javascript myself. If I need to write better Javascript, well fine, let's learn it then. If I have time to learn a new language, why don't I learn Ruby or Python or ObjectiveC, why learn CoffeeScript when I know Javascript already.

But, I imagine many would love it very much (and is loving it already). I imagine if there was a PHP or .Net framework to write Javascript, how great would it have been (may be there is ... anyway). I would have liked it very much! So, people who are already comfortable with Ruby or Python are loving it. Like, Hasan :)

Who are not much familiar with Ruby or Python, please don't stress yourself at this moment, I think. Rather, I would suggest studying Jesmine, Backbone JS, Spine JS etc would have been lot more empowering for current application.

While most of our clients works are in ASP.net and PHP, I guess I wouldn't be reading Node.js either, because, it's not a client side Javascript and our servers are .net based. When we can really change the server to V8, then ... well since it's a Javascript, I guess we can quickly start writing it, nothing to worry much about. So, dropped it from my reading list already ... so many things to read, so little time, need to pick carefully, hehe.

Just my personal views, thought to share so that if there are some guys out there, thinking like me that, "Damn, I don't know this and that" would comfort themselves that there are other guys (me) who don't know those either :D

Happy reading!!

[Md Emran Hasan]

I somewhat agree with raisul bhai but would like to emphasize on another view.

Those of us who work mostly on client projects, we seldom get the chance to pick the technology for a project - so most times we have to go along the technology stack client has already picked. however, as responsible developers, we should inform clients if a different technology better suits their need. For example, for high concurrency web services, NodeJS would serve hell lot requests than our regular servers.

On another note, if we are working on a company's internal product, then we have both the motivation and reasoning to pick a technology that reduces development time, at the same time advances the company.

Personally I am trying to get a grasp of NodeJS, will soon make use of it in making a analytics solution. And looking forward to try coffeescript sometime soon.

Have a nice day everybody!

[Shuhel Ahmed]

Hi,

“The whole point of CoffeeScript is to remove the noise out of JavaScript and provide with a compact and pleasing syntax”

Here is what written in the first paragraph of http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/

“CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. Underneath all of those embarrassing braces and semicolons, JavaScript has always had a gorgeous object model at its heart. CoffeeScript is an attempt to expose the good parts of JavaScript in a simple way.”

Thanks to Douglas Crockford of Yhaoo, one of the saints in the world of computer initiated a movement to popularize JavaScript and showing its true power and capability to the new generation of developers. And as we can see, that movement along with the efforts of other ignites a lot of mind blowing ideas including commonJs and its implementations (nodejs, jsdom to name a few)

JavaScript is said to be the most misunderstood language in the world. A huge number of developers started using JavaScript without learning it before and thought this is toy language of some sort. But it is not the case for sure.

CoffeeScript is an abstraction over JavaScript. As we know abstractions are leaky and if that does not provide considerable value, we should not use it.

Think about all the developers in the world using CoffeeScript rather JavaScript. Now it will be very difficult for them to learn JavaScript which is the heart of nodejs along with other great things based on JavaScript.

By the way, what about the debugging options for CoffeeScript. As CoffeeScript compiles into JavaScript, developers ultimately has to deal with all those “embarrassing braces and semicolons” that comes with JavaScript in the end when debugging. So a developer (think about an entry level dev) ends up learning two completely different languages for the same purpose. Now, if he learns CoffeeScript first and tries to learn JavaScript then, he will soon be a lost little dear in the wide meadow of JavaScript. To add more difficulties, think about the all the experience he had by using static language and of course CoffeeScript and will hope JavaScript will behave the same!

The whole point of using CoffeeScript is because JavaScript is complex/embarrassing to write and read. At one point or another, if you end up writing or reading JavaScript then does it worth giving CoffeeScript a try?

Think about all these static languages we use every day (C++, C#, …), semicolons and braces are everywhere. Do those languages embarrass us? Then, what makes JavaScript the culprit?

JavaScript is different language, it is a little but equally powerful or in some cases more powerful than all those static languages. Function is in the heart of this language and this (function) is so powerful that you can even use it for namespacing your code.

We should treat JavaScript differently as we treat other languages and give it enough respect as we give other. It is far better language to call its usages embarrassing. Embarrassing is a storng word to use in this case. Now, if somebody calls those braces and semicolons embarrassing just because he did create a new language, make me not to like it in the first place.

I would not mind if CoffeeScript came to replace VbScript in the browser environment. JavaScript should not be replaced with anything in any environment at least now until we have something far better than JavaScript. CoffeeScript in not certainly a better language than JavaScript.

Would there be any nodeJs if we all would have been using CoffeeScript?

In the beginning good books or learning materials for JavaScript was scarce. Developers ended up writing JavaScript in a way that they should not that is without using proper scoping, semicolons etc. JavaScript was so tolerant in the past that it still tries to make sense out of code where programmer forgot to use the semicolon at the end of the statement.

As JavaScript standard (EcmaScript, Most recent ES5) got improved and JavaScript compilers (V8, SunSpider, Chakra) are now more and more supporting standard, it became harder to write the code the way we used to in the past which is considered to be bad practice for writhing JavaScript code. Now all of a sudden CoffeeScript is offering this to us. My problem is not what it compiles into rather how we write it or we are forced to write it. Note that, I know it compiles into javaScript and all are jsLint Complaint good healthy code after that.]

Why would we depend on CoffeeScript to write better JavaScript code for us?

Thanks for the link of the book. I will read it to know more about CoffeeScript certainly.

---

From: S. M. Sohan <soh...@gmail.com>
To: agi...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2011 9:43 AM

[Shuhel Ahmed]

Hello Tanvir Bhai,

I can see your point. But, then again, does it worth using CoffeeScript which attempts to replace a far better language like js?

And I prefer lees less than sass!!(Super Awesome Style Sheet). I would love to use sass in my next project.

Thanks You

---

From: nhm tanveer hossain khan <ha...@welltreat.us>
To: agi...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2011 10:55 AM

[S. M. Sohan]

Keeping my response short (the CoffeeScript way!): learning CoffeeScript has no conflict with Javascript.

--
Sohan
http://smsohan.com
skype:smsohan | gtalk:sohan39 | cell: 403-714-2673

[Fuad Omar]

Thank you sohan for the heads up.

Rails 3.1 might ship with CofeeScript. You can watch the video of
David Heinemeier Hansson talking in Rails Conference 2011. Also, here
is an interesting blog about it:
http://www.rubyinside.com/rails-3-1-adopts-coffeescript-jquery-sass-and-controversy-4669.html

--------

Fuad Bin Omar
COO
Nascenia Ltd ( www.nascenia.com )


On Sep 28, 10:55 am, nhm tanveer hossain khan <ha...@welltreat.us>
wrote:

> Hi Shuhel bhai,
> I guess if you would have taken CoffeeScript as a different language than
> JavaScript. It would have solved your problem.
> Since your example used to produce the following code in JS -
> (function() {
>   var var1;
>   var1 = 1;
>
> }).call(this);
>
> So you can see it's not only following standard moreover the best practices
> (like scoping)
>
> I'm loving coffee script, less and sass (for css) because all those let me
> write compact, readable script.
> i would suggest you to use coffee script for one of your projects then let
> us know your experience :) i'm sure you gonna love it ;)
>

> >> ------------------------------
> >> *From:* nhm tanveer hossain khan <ha...@welltreat.us>
> >> *To:* "agi...@googlegroups.com" <agi...@googlegroups.com>
> >> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 27, 2011 11:23 PM
> >> *Subject:* Re: Mind blowing Javascript libraries

>
> >> I've using nodejs and coffee script for a while :) loving it . Looks like
> >> nodejs gonna lead the new era :)
>

> >> *Khadok.com**
> >> the passionate restaurant review site*
> >> *a venture from Well Treat Us*

> *Khadok.com**
> the passionate restaurant review site*
> *a venture from Well Treat Us*

[Fuad Omar]

Actually, it is shipped with rails 3.1.0 (although I am yet to use
it) . See http://guides.rubyonrails.org/3_1_release_notes.html for
details .

On Sep 29, 7:16 pm, Fuad Omar <fuad...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you sohan for the heads up.
>
> Rails 3.1 might ship with CofeeScript. You can watch the video of
> David Heinemeier Hansson talking in Rails Conference 2011. Also, here

> is an interesting blog about it:http://www.rubyinside.com/rails-3-1-adopts-coffeescript-jquery-sass-a...