
Mozilla, WebKit To Support Debugging CoffeeScript and other JS Languages - DanielRibeiro
http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/08/debug-languages-on-javascript-vm
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fragsworth
This is great news. The only thing that kept me from using a "higher level
Javascript language" was this.

I predict a massive surge in CoffeeScript usage over the next couple years.

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ori_b
I just wish that browsers would allow some bytecode format with
linemap/registermap/... data for debugging, and entirely forget about directly
supporting languages directly.

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tonye
I have to agree, a sandboxed version of llvm bytecode would open up all sorts
of opportunities.

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samlittlewood
Have a look at pnacl - LLVM executables in NACL sandbox:

    
    
      http://nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/data/site/pnacl.pdf
    
      http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl

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Judson
fyi, I may be late to the party, but if you want to debug minified js in
firefox and prefer not to wait until its integrated, I have been using this
add-on[0] with success.

[0]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/javascript-
de...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/javascript-deminifier/)

~~~
masklinn
This feature is also available built-in in Safari and Chrome (in the dev
tools, Script pane, look at the bottom buttons bar, its rightmost button is a
pair of braces `{ }`. Click on that, it will reformat your source to allow for
debugging, the reformatting lasts until you reload the page so it's very handy
to try and debug SPA)

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pkulak
It would also be nice to get this support in Node for those of us using JS
server side.

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InclinedPlane
Only a matter of time before coffeescript is natively supported by the
progressive browsers, I think.

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mnemonik
I'm not so sure about that because CoffeeScript is a very fast moving language
(one of its benefits) and it doesn't make sense to slow down the iteration
cycle by integrating it with browsers directly. Then you would have to worry
about which CoffeeScript features you could take advantage of, instead of just
compiling to the lowest common denominator of JS, so to speak.

~~~
starwed
(This is exactly the reason Brendan Eich has said he prefers the "compile to
JS" approach to incorporating other languages of a VM into browsers.)

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starwed
Should read _or_ a VM -- I still don't entirely understand how HN determines
when you can still edit a post, pretty sure I've edited posts this old before.

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drivingmenuts
I missed the "JS" the first read-thru and was hoping the title alluded to
maybe Python somehow being used in the browser.

Oh well. I guess that's just hoping a bit too much.

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mikemaccana
This would apply to Pyjamas (Python that compiles to JS) too.

That said, Coffeescript is very similar to Python.

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MBlume
I actually think Coffeescript has one up on Python in some places. Splat
assignment, for example, and a slightly simpler idiom for iterating through
objects.

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jjm
This is awesome! It will be nice to see what kind of debug tools we can come
up with.

