Customer Reviews

CoffeeScript: Accelerated JavaScript Development

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've bought this book with the hope that it will be more than just a simple language reference, that it would familiarize me with CoffeeScript's concepts and ideas; teach me how to write elegant code in CoffeeScript, especially when paired with jQuery. However, for developers with some experience this book fails to be anything beyond a wordy language reference. In fact, the official language reference [1] does equal job in teaching you CoffeeScript, plus it will always be up to date with the current progress in the language, while this book will grow old very fast (already at the time of this writing, the online language reference describes features that are not present in the book).

The book contains several chapters, each describing a small set of related features of the language. At the end of each chapter these features are then used to improve a simple game that is being built throughout the book. The code however is very messy; although it is continually improved as new features are brought up, even the final version of the game is not what I would call a beautiful code. Even the object oriented design of the game is not clean and many decisions make no sense.

Overall, the book seems to be targeted towards beginners in the area of web development. There are parts where author explains basic concepts of HTML and CSS. A large part (about one third) of the book is dedicated to jQuery and Node.js, basic concepts and API of both are explained, but why was this included in the book is a mystery. This was supposed to be a CoffeeScript book, wasn't it? Nevertheless, the coverage of jQuery and Node is very shallow and there are certainly better books to get familiar with both technologies. I was especially disappointed with the jQuery chapter. I was hoping to see some examples of writing nice, object oriented CoffeeScript code encapsulating the jQuery manipulations, but instead, the examples were just a mess of jQuery-ish code.

To sum up, if you are just starting with the web development, you have a vague idea about HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery then this book might be for you. I can see how the gradual progress in building a simple game and the exercises at the end of each chapter could help an absolute novice to get up to speed quickly. However, if you have some experience in web development, then just go and read the language reference [1].

[1] [...]

CoffeeScript went from an interesting experiment to the talk of every JS conference, all in the span of two short years. I picked up this book with high expectations, but unfortunately was left somewhat disappointed. The book provides a whirlwind tour of CoffeeScript, but even at that, it does not seem to be well thought out our laid out for the reader: the examples are unnecessarily complicated and verbose, whereas they could have been much shorter (which in itself is somewhat ironic), and the book would have benefitted by spending some extra time on motivating the underlying Javascript patterns. In short, it feels rushed and incomplete.

All of this is not to discourage you from learning about CoffeeScript - it's a great language. To start, I would recommend checking out the CoffeeScript site itself, as it provides a great walkthrough.

This book is an interesting little book which I found on my local bookshop. It's quite a whirlwind tour of CofeeScript (even though CoffeeScript is a 'smallish' language) and it's enough to whet one's appetite for the language or script.

PROS:

* The author is obviously very familiar with CoffeeScript
* Style is easy-to-read and light hearted
* Able to read the book within about 3-4 hours
* Running example is useful; contrary to other reviewers I prefer a running example that does something rather than snippets that leave one wondering how it all integrates together

CONS:

* Sometimes the author seems too familiar with CoffeeScript and JavaScript - you'll need to know JavaScript at least medium well to get the most of the book
* Sometimes the author is a little terse and for someone not familiar with JavaScript's model of events (and other models), one can wonder why a feature (such as the => operator) has been included
* Book could be expanded a little
* It wouldn't hurt to have another example

As this is the first print book made about this language, it is an interesting book to have. Personally I would have expanded the 'How to Install CoffeeScript' to the back of the book or even made it available online as a download (this sounds 'odd' but to get CoffeeScript the reader will most likely have to have access to the 'net anyway). This would enable an expanded and more helpful section that could more easily be kept up-to-date.

That said, it does whet one's appetite and if one wishes to have a real bound book, at the moment this is one's only choice (other than printing and binding one of the online but not professionally bound and published tomes).

DSL

I was a bit hesitant to buy this book after seeing the low score on the reviews but decided to buy it anyway given that there are very few book available on the subject. I am really glad I bought it. The book is packed with a lot of useful information ranging from installation instructions (for the Mac), basic language features, jQuery integration and server-side programming with Node.js.

Despite the fact that some of the information on the book is available online the book provides a great single place to get familiar with the language.

I've just finished the book and found it very mixed. The good bits were the fact it had and example app, and that right now its the only coffeescript book out. The bad bits are it doesn't document best practices, the code examples are often pretty poor, the example app has some serious flaws (code quality and lack of tests), and its very short.

It feels like it could have been a great book, and maybe future editions will be, but right now I'd definitely think people could consider just working from the excellent online (free) books and documentation.