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CoffeeScript

3.3K
1.2K
+ 1
1K
Hack

531
168
+ 1
29
Markdown

21.2K
15.8K
+ 1
960

CoffeeScript vs Hack vs Markdown: What are the differences?

  1. Syntax: CoffeeScript uses a significant whitespace syntax where indentation determines the block structure, similar to Python, while Hack follows a more traditional curly brace syntax similar to C languages.
  2. Type System: CoffeeScript is dynamically typed, meaning variables do not have a fixed type at compile time, whereas Hack is statically typed, requiring variables to have a defined type at compile time to catch errors early.
  3. Compilation: CoffeeScript is typically transpiled into JavaScript, which can lead to some overhead and loss of code readability in the generated output, while Hack is compiled directly to PHP, enabling greater optimization and efficiency.
  4. Features: CoffeeScript provides syntactic sugar and simplifications for writing concise and clean code, whereas Hack offers advanced features like type annotations, generics, and async/await for more robust and scalable applications.
  5. Tooling: CoffeeScript lacks mature tooling support compared to Hack, which benefits from integration with the HHVM runtime, type checking tools, and a rich set of developer tools for efficient coding and debugging.
  6. Community Adoption: CoffeeScript has a smaller community and fewer active projects compared to Hack, which is supported by Facebook and has a growing user base within the PHP community.

In Summary, CoffeeScript and Hack differ in syntax, type system, compilation process, features, tooling support, and community adoption, catering to different developer preferences and project requirements.

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Pros of CoffeeScript
Pros of Hack
Pros of Markdown
  • 199
    Easy to read
  • 179
    Faster to write
  • 126
    Syntactic sugar
  • 104
    Readable
  • 104
    Elegant
  • 73
    Pretty
  • 53
    Javascript the good parts
  • 48
    Open source
  • 44
    Classes
  • 35
    "it's just javascript"
  • 16
    Compact code
  • 15
    Easy
  • 13
    Simple
  • 13
    Not Javascript
  • 2
    Does the same with less code
  • 1
    I'm jobs I'm software engineer
  • 6
    Interoperates seamlessly with php
  • 6
    Open source
  • 5
    Backed by facebook
  • 4
    HHVM
  • 2
    PHP like
  • 2
    Great documentation
  • 2
    Generics
  • 1
    Fast
  • 1
    Used by facebook
  • 0
    Great type system
  • 0
    Easy to learn
  • 345
    Easy formatting
  • 246
    Widely adopted
  • 194
    Intuitive
  • 132
    Github integration
  • 41
    Great for note taking
  • 2
    Defacto GitHub lingo

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Cons of CoffeeScript
Cons of Hack
Cons of Markdown
  • 3
    No ES6
  • 1
    Corner cases in syntax
  • 1
    Parentheses required in 0-ary function calls
  • 1
    Unclear what will be grouped to {…}
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 2
      Cannot centralise (HTML code needed)
    • 1
      Inconsistend flavours eg github, reddit, mmd etc
    • 1
      Limited syntax
    • 1
      Not suitable for longer documents
    • 1
      Non-extensible
    • 1
      No right indentation
    • 1
      No underline
    • 1
      Unable to indent tables

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    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is CoffeeScript?

    It adds syntactic sugar inspired by Ruby, Python and Haskell in an effort to enhance JavaScript's brevity and readability. Specific additional features include list comprehension and de-structuring assignment.

    What is Hack?

    Hack provides instantaneous type checking via a local server that watches the filesystem. It typically runs in less than 200 milliseconds, making it easy to integrate into your development workflow without introducing a noticeable delay.

    What is Markdown?

    Markdown is two things: (1) a plain text formatting syntax; and (2) a software tool, written in Perl, that converts the plain text formatting to HTML.

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    What companies use CoffeeScript?
    What companies use Hack?
    What companies use Markdown?

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    What tools integrate with CoffeeScript?
    What tools integrate with Hack?
    What tools integrate with Markdown?

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    Blog Posts

    What are some alternatives to CoffeeScript, Hack, and Markdown?
    JavaScript
    JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
    TypeScript
    TypeScript is a language for application-scale JavaScript development. It's a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript.
    ES6
    Goals for ECMAScript 2015 include providing better support for large applications, library creation, and for use of ECMAScript as a compilation target for other languages. Some of its major enhancements include modules, class declarations, lexical block scoping, iterators and generators, promises for asynchronous programming, destructuring patterns, and proper tail calls.
    Babel
    Babel will turn your ES6+ code into ES5 friendly code, so you can start using it right now without waiting for browser support.
    jQuery
    jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.
    See all alternatives