Shortcut programming languages am I missing something?

Question

I'm seeing a rise in the number of projects online that require additional "short" syntax to generate underlying code (commonly HTML and JS), and every time I see another pop up I wonder if I'm missing something.

Surely the additional time taken to learn and remember these shortcodes is lost when passing projects between different team members (designers et al) who then have to relearn basic languages such as HTML and JS?

Point in question: YAML being used for generating templates, and projects (such as) CoffeeScript used to generate Javascript. I'm just wondering if other Stackoverflow folk think that there's major benefits to this granular level of abstraction, or if there's a feeling that these types of projects have any lifespan, considering the improvements in the base technologies (I'm thinking HTML5 / CSS / JQuery) here. Have markup languages not evolved enough to really warrant these?

Realise this isn't really a question as such, but would be interested to hear the community viewpoint. I'm sure there are genuinely good reasons for these types of projects when creating self generating code, but outside of that, I'm puzzled - with many folks using them day to day. Is this a bandwagon worth jumping on?

Answer 1

Personally I don't think that it's worth it as most things you can do in javascript are already simplified by libraries such as jQuery. As far as their lifespan goes it's hard to tell. However, as long as you know javascript, and you understand the code output, moving to a new project that isn't using CoffeeScript for example is a simple matter of taking the output code with you.

Answer 2

Any sufficiently complicated program contains an implementation of Lisp.

This is the ideology that Lisp and friends promote over many years. Basically, you're discouraged to code any application logic in a "raw" language. Raw languages are universal and low level, so your logic quickly gets verbose and contaminated with lots of code needed to support the language itself.

Instead, create a DSL that suits your application best and code your logic, and nothing but the logic, in this DSL. Hide all nasty language details behind the DSL. This makes the logic much easier to improve and support.

On the other side, things like Coffescript, Groovy etc are IMO the wrong way to go. They are basically trying to create new universal languages but with a "better" syntax, however, this doesn't solve the fundamental problem - these languages still describe abstract calculations rather than your problem domain. A more productive way is to have a very basic underlying language and a well-developed macro facility that would simplify creating DLSs. This is how lisp itself works, another example of this approach is Haxe/Neko.

Answer 3

In my opinion I prefer jQuery for writing short JS instructions and prevent everyone from bloating the final product. I don't like css frameworks because we are building huge portals and you don't always need all of the stuff hidden inside these. I prefer writing modular css based on some common rules like using clearfix for clearing an using a css reset. :)