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I am strictly a server side programmer and have a problem doing front end work. I want to learn it, but it feels like a sheer cliff to me. The low level CoffeeScript documentation is excellent. What I am looking for and not being a JavaScript programmer this is admittedly difficult for me, is some hand holding on the mechanics.

* packaging, how do I import modules or packages? Do these even exist?

* debugging, how do I do this?

* unit testing?

I installed CoffeeScript via node, then npm (node package manager) and am using it via the command line.

Something like the ipython (http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/) shell along with pdb (http://muffinresearch.co.uk/archives/2008/04/27/python-debug...) would help immensely in my adoption of CoffeeScript.

In a perfect world the repl/debugger would be built into the webapp and open a websocket to another webapp so I could introspect/debug the page from another page while it was running (turtles all the way down). This is similar to the workflow for developing server side software (Jython, Python, Java).



For debugging, see node-inspector: https://github.com/dannycoates/node-inspector

For details about modules: http://nodejs.org/docs/v0.4.8/api/modules.html

Use the same site for the rest of the API too of course.

I like vows.js for unit testing: http://vowsjs.org/


* npm + bowserify or stich or others

* in firebug / web inspector

* qunit, jasmine etc

repl for node

    ### REPL ###
    repl = require 'repl'
    r = repl.start 'REPL> '
    r.context.client = -> exec("open http://localhost:#    {config.port}/") ; return


Thank you both for these links, I am off to a very good start.




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