benjie

I'm often asked why I still use CoffeeScript rather than ES6/7. Well, in truth I use both, but I do still prefer CoffeeScript for the following reasons:

• Correctly trimmed multiline strings (ES6 includes the indentation because it doesn't have significant whitespace)
• Existential operator (a?.b; b?(); a?.b?() and of course a ? b)
  • a ? b is more appropriate than a || b if "" or 0 are values of a you wish to persist
  • (a && a.b && typeof a.b === 'function') ? a.b() : undefined doesn't quite have the same ring to it as a?.b?()
• Significant whitespace
  • (a personal preference, but since you already lay your code out sensibly why do you need the additional visual distraction of braces?)
• Convenient shorthand for common things (-> (regular non-bound function), @ (this.), :: (.prototype.))
• in to check if something in a list