Simon Willison’s Weblog

Was CoffeeScript invented to help Ruby programmers get over that dirty yucky feeling they get when working in JavaScript?

4th February 2012

My answer to Was CoffeeScript invented to help Ruby programmers get over that dirty yucky feeling they get when working in JavaScript? on Quora

The original Prototype JS library might fit that description—more than CoffeeScript, at any rate.

Posted 4th February 2012 at 2:37 pm · Follow me on Mastodon, Bluesky, Twitter or subscribe to my newsletter

More recent articles

I vibe coded my dream macOS presentation app - 25th February 2026
Writing about Agentic Engineering Patterns - 23rd February 2026
Adding TILs, releases, museums, tools and research to my blog - 20th February 2026

This is Was CoffeeScript invented to help Ruby programmers get over that dirty yucky feeling they get when working in JavaScript? by Simon Willison, posted on 4th February 2012.

coffeescript 3 javascript 743 ruby 72 quora 1005

Next: How can I parse unquoted JSON with JavaScript?

Previous: How long until Ruby developers are as cheap as PHP developers? is it already happening? should I still learn it or it only has a couple years left and I'm better off with SSJS?

Monthly briefing

Sponsor me for $10/month and get a curated email digest of the month's most important LLM developments.

Pay me to send you less!

Sponsor & subscribe