Is / why is Rails 6 still using / recommending CoffeeScript?

Question

I am new to the Rails word. Using Rails 6 and following the guides / tutorials. On the official Rails guides, there are CoffeeScript examples and it's even recommended to use CoffeeScript, see: https://guides.rubyonrails.org/working_with_javascript_in_rails.html#an-introduction-to-ajax (even in the edge guides: https://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/working_with_javascript_in_rails.html#an-introduction-to-ajax).

As an experienced JavaScript developer, I have never seen for the past three years any company choosing CoffeeScript as their JavaScript tool. Thanks to the innovations from CoffeeScript JavaScript has evolved and the need for CoffeeScript disappeared.

Now why would Rails still recommend it? I feel like it will most probably confuse newcomers to Rails because for most of the new developers, CoffeeScript is not even a thing anymore. It's a good history lesson if you read it about JavaScript but that's it.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I arrived here from googling the same thing. Here's what I learned in the last 30 min:

• There was a lot of discussion about updating the rails guides to remove coffeescript
  • That took place, and recent versions of rails guides do not reference coffeescript any more
• Anecdotal, but some very experienced rails devs I asked about this do not use coffeescript any more.

Now JS is a quite decent language, so there’s no reason to use CoffeeScript anymore. Also, I don’t think that there’s anyone maintaining

Based on this info:

• I will use up to date rails guides (that don't use coffeescript)
• I won't use or learn coffeescript

Answer 2

There's a pull request opened to change the information: https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/37529