Re: MoonScript, a language that compiles to Lua

[Axel Kittenberger <axkibe@...>]

Interesting. I took this chance also to take a deeper look at
Coffeescript, since my current project is in Javascript. Personally I
don't care if significant whitespace or not. It wonders me, what
strong feelings this little thing always arises. Personally I am very
strict with indentation anyway, so it doesn't matter to me.

Language differences go deeper than superficial syntax like this. It
are the subtleties that make or break a language (undefined vs. nil,
paramter lists, etc.). I like the idea doing some "preprocessors" to
change the superficials to fit ones needs.

In Moonscript/Coffeescript the same issue in turns em off:

"Because, by default, all assignments to variables that are not
lexically visible will be declared as local, special syntax is
required to
declare a variable globally."

Local or global default also raised tons of discussions. I tend with
one conclusion: I don't see why there should be anything default. What
are few characters vs. hours of fun endless debugging? Anyways this
"if the name already exists uses global otherwise local, is very
unfortunate as soon the project grows over the few demolines of
impressing expressiveness all the languages have to feature on their
frontpage.

I don't know how Lua's enhanced custom debugging information works
along, but could you also make a compile mode that complies 1 line to
1 line? Even if the lines get longer, it eases debugging when line 544
is line 544.