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One of the more serious
concerns about CoffeeScript is that it lacks a first-class debugging environment. The code that you see in a browser debugger is the compiled JavaScript, not the CoffeeScript source. Thanks to JavaScript Source Maps, however, this
long-running issue will likely be solved in the very near future.
JavaScript Source Maps is a system of references from JavaScript executing in the browser to original source files that have been minified, concatenated, compiled, or otherwise transformed. Chrome dev tools evangelist
Paul Irish called Source Maps "the biggest thing to happen to JavaScript debugging in years." The Google Chrome team is pushing aggressively toward the release of Source Maps support (you can preview the feature in
Chrome Canary).
You can read more about Source Maps in
MozillaWiki feature page, in
this tutorial, and in
the formal proposal co-authored by Mozilla and Google. There is a
Source map support plan discussion on the CoffeeScript Google Group.
Finally, Mozilla intern Nick Fitzgerald has produced a great what-I-did-this-summer video explaining the importance of Source Maps and of languages such as CoffeeScript. I recommend watching all 15 minutes of it, but for the TL;DR crowd, start around minute 11 for the sequence in which he demos an actual JavaScript console error with a link back to CoffeeScript source. Woo Hoo!
Finally, Mozilla intern Nick Fitzgerald has produced a great what-I-did-this-summer video explaining the importance of Source Maps and of languages such as CoffeeScript. I recommend watching all 15 minutes of it, but for the TL;DR crowd, start around minute 11 for the sequence in which he demos an actual JavaScript console error with a link back to CoffeeScript source. Woo Hoo!
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