People might not know but CoffeeScript 2 is out already and supports the ES6 syntaxes. I've been using it for a large Vue.js SPA (with webpack) and some small projects, it really improves the development and saving me a lot of the time.
Can we assume that CoffeeScript will generally remain a superset of ES6 features?
I'm trying to figure out if I should ditch coffee for 6to5 but won't bother if coffee will give me all the ES6 features plus the easier syntax (no semicolons, fat arrows, etc).
CoffeeScript's syntax make a lot more sense than ES6, and CoffeeScript 2 compiles down to ES6 primitives. It's a shame that it's usage is pretty low in the industry.
Since you were changing everything, I thought it would include a bunch of new revolutionary syntax and features, just like Coffeescript 1 did many years ago and made the world jump into ES6+.
Since this is just keeping up with the already existing ES6, why would anyone bother to move from ES6 to Coffee?
This is why I like just using coffeescript. Nicer syntax than ES6, with the same speed as optimized basic Javascript (because that’s what it compiles to).
Yes and no. Although we get some fantastic features, one of the most critical- the ability to neglect parens and curly braces- is lost in es6. I'm working on an es6 project right now and still prefer coffeescript.
Well you have to ask for whom. For existing coffee script developers, they can keep using it until they get up to date with ES6. It's a language and it takes time to learn.
Its funny, I used to really enjoy CoffeeScript but since Babel / ES6 has come out I can't stand it anymore! ES6 has just the right amount of syntax, with lots of optionals too (semicolons, no brackets when writing function expressions, etc).
IMHO the CoffeeScript syntax is ugly and confusing.
ES6 improves the language without borking the syntax so much.
To add something more constructive, CoffeeScript is still just a transpiler. I think the long-term goal is for browsers to "natively" interpret/run ES6 code rather than forever transpiling to ES5. Either that, or we actually move on to something like web assembly.
I use CoffeeScript whenever requirements permit. Recently I've been working on a small side project using ES6 (via iojs) and I have to admit that it's pretty refreshing to see JavaScript take on some modern improvements and it's clear that today's CoffeeScript loses out on critical functionality that ES6 brings to the table.
With that stated, I still overwhelmingly prefer CoffeeScript's syntax to ES6. I'm glad ES6 took some inspiration from CoffeeScript, and Babel is a great way to bridge the future of JavaScript over to client's of the present, but I'll always prefer the CoffeeScript syntax for white-space sensitivity, support for optional semi-colons, optional parenthesis for function calls and optional curly braces for object literals. I don't need those features but I really like them. For me, the real future of JavaScript is a re-imagined CoffeeScript that takes on some refined semantics in order to bring ES6 feature support into the CoffeeScript compiler. Admittedly, that is not a simple undertaking (though I'd imagine the code would be simpler as a whole since it would necessarily trash obsolete features like pseudo-classes etc), but I know I'm not the only person who would love something like this.
I don't know how jashkenas is feeling about ES6, but one day I'll have my ES6Coffee, even if I have to brew it myself.
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