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

Comparison operators


Now that we know how to use these control structures, let's learn about some comparison operators we can use to test the truthfulness of useful questions. There's one big surprise in here, so let's get that out of the way. == and != in CoffeeScript don't compile to their equivalents in JavaScript.

1 == 2
3 != 4

becomes:

1 === 2;
3 !== 4;

Note

According to the CoffeeScript documentation, this decision was made because "the == operator frequently causes undesirable coercion, is intransitive, and has a different meaning than in other languages".

Most JavaScripters recommend using === and !== exclusively, so this is simply enshrining that best practice. If you wish to know more about this recommendation, read http://www.impressivewebs.com/why-use-triple-equals-javascipt/.

Other than that surprise, the other common JavaScript operators are all present and work as you might expect.

if 1 < 2 && 3 >= 2
  if false || true
    if !false
      console.log "All is well."

However...