Book Image

CoffeeScript Application Development

By : Ian Greenleaf Young
Book Image

CoffeeScript Application Development

By: Ian Greenleaf Young

Overview of this book

JavaScript is becoming one of the key languages in web development. It is now more important than ever across a growing list of platforms. CoffeeScript puts the fun back into JavaScript programming with elegant syntax and powerful features. CoffeeScript Application Development will give you an in-depth look at the CoffeeScript language, all while building a working web application. Along the way, you'll see all the great features CoffeeScript has to offer, and learn how to use them to deal with real problems like sprawling codebases, incomplete data, and asynchronous web requests. Through the course of this book you will learn the CoffeeScript syntax and see it demonstrated with simple examples. As you go, you'll put your new skills into practice by building a web application, piece by piece. You'll start with standard language features such as loops, functions, and string manipulation. Then, we'll delve into advanced features like classes and inheritance. Learn advanced idioms to deal with common occurrences like external web requests, and hone your technique for development tasks like debugging and refactoring. CoffeeScript Application Development will teach you not only how to write CoffeeScript, but also how to build solid applications that run smoothly and are a pleasure to maintain.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
CoffeeScript Application Development
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgements
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

The refactoring cycle


When I work on software projects, I like to perform frequent iterations of refactoring amongst periods of adding functionality. This tends to result in much higher-quality software: if I regularly set aside time for refactoring, I can catch any organizational problems before they grow out of control. Like tending a garden, weeds inevitably sprout up, and culling them is an unavoidable (and not entirely unpleasant) part of the job.

The other benefit of frequent refactoring iterations is that hindsight always outperforms foresight. Looking back on code I've already written makes it much easier to see what parts of the application may be a problem, and where I should devote some extra effort to code cleanup. Knowing that I will take the time to go over my code in the future frees me up from worrying about it in the present. Instead of agonizing over writing perfect code the first time I do it, I am happy to write good-enough code the first time, secure in the knowledge...