Building Web, Cloud, and Mobile Solutions with F#

Appendix C. Client-Side Technologies That Go Well with F#

In the last chapter of this book, I showed you a few options for creating web-centric, client-side code in a functional style. In this appendix I’ll introduce a few other client-side technologies that go well with F#. While this introduction does not comprehensively cover any of the technologies, it will give you enough information to get started.

CoffeeScript

I’ve mentioned CoffeeScript a few times throughout this book. CoffeeScript is similar to LiveScript in that it’s a unique language that compiles to JavaScript. As I mentioned in Chapter 5, it is one of the parents of LiveScript, therefore much of what I stated about LiveScript also applies to CoffeeScript. The biggest difference between LiveScript and CoffeeScript is that LiveScript has more of a focus on providing support for developing in a more functional style.

Note

While this appendix focuses on client-side technologies, CoffeeScript is not limited to only client-side development. It can also be used for server-side development thanks to Node.js.

You may be wondering why you might wish to choose CoffeeScript over LiveScript. CoffeeScript has been steadily growing in popularity. Because of this, it has a great support group, lots of online examples, and a growing subset of tool support. The biggest things you lose when choosing CoffeeScript over LiveScript include several of the functional stylistic concepts that LiveScript provides as well as a few of the niceties of ...