CoffeeScript is a little middleman language that compiles into JavaScript written by Jeremy Ashkenas, who is responsible for the Ruby Processing project.

It aims to bring elements of Python and Ruby’s cleaner syntax to JavaScript. CoffeeScript uses Pyhton’s significant whitespace instead of curly braces and does not require semi-colons for terminating lines. Right off the bat, the existence operator (?) struck me as quite slick. Checking if a variable is defined in JavaScript has always been a sore spot.

In JavaScript:

var solipsism;
if ((typeof mind !== "undefined" && mind !== null) && !(typeof world !== "undefined" && world !== null)) {
    solipsism = true;
}

The same statement, in CoffeeScript:

solipsism: true if mind? and not world?

Note that a colon is used for assignment, as in JSON.

Other features include argument splats, Ruby ranges, more powerful switch statements, simplified lexical scoping, almost everything as an expression, and more.

It’s written in Ruby and uses racc for the parser.

More complex examples can be found here.

Courtesy of Wikipedia, entities allowed to register .ca domains:

• a Canadian citizen of the age of majority,
• a permanent resident of Canada,
• a legally recognized Canadian organization,
• an Inuit, First Nation, Métis or other people indigenous to Canada,
• an Indian Band as defined in the Indian Act of Canada,
• a foreign resident of Canada that holds a registered - Canadian trademark,
• An executor, administrator or other legal representative of a person or organization that meets the requirements,
• a division of the government,
• Queen Elizabeth II in her capacity as head of state of Canada

I’m pleased that many independent labels have been offering digital download (MP3 or FLAC) coupons with their LPs, for those of us who like to listen to vinyl at home as well as on the go, but don’t always have a setup to rip records. More often than not, a larger independent release you purchase today comes with such a coupon.

However, I have yet to order from a label/distro that allowed you to download the digital version as soon as you purchase the albums online. Why exactly is this? I suspect that these coupons are usually handled by the pressing plant, and the label itself has little to do with the process other than deliver audio files. For instance, United is always upselling their digital download offering.

Is it too much to ask that someone like Amazon/iTunes/a third party distributor partners with labels for instant download pass generation after my credit card gets billed? This is even more painful when the labels already sell digital downloads on their site. Having instant access while the LP makes its way through the mail would be a great feature. The whole idea of ordering a record online NOW, waiting two weeks for it to arrive to retrieve a small piece of paper with some hard to type, randomly generated string that has been shoved inside a sleeve, going back to my computer, typing said code in, and then trying not to lose that small slip in case I need it down the line may be a novel concept that has only recently reached widespread adoption, but already the process feels rather archaic.

(And before one of you says it: yes, as archaic as buying records in 2009.)