We tried that for a while, yeah? https://coffeescript.org/

And I loved it. So much more convenient than standard JavaScript.

CoffeeScript code bases are the scariest code bases on the planet, the nightmares. To me CoffeeScript inherited all the inconsistencies of JavaScript, then made the syntax inconsistent as well. It least it had optional chaining.

It's weird right? I come from Rails and thought CoffeeScript (CS) could make it way more readable, like Python but with cool string interpolations!

But you're absolutely right, it made my code really hard to reason about. I don't know why this is the case but it was always harder to read my own CS than raw JS. I found myself putting blocks into the CS2JS just to read inner workings.

While it made me less verbose and short-term faster, longer term it made me slower.

JavaScript has optional chaining now! https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

Oh god. You're right. I'd blotted that out of my memory.

How would JS with semantic whitespace difference from just auto-indenting a JS file?

Lamdas and first-class functions might make it pretty ugly, I definitely write `func(arg1, arg2, (res) => console.log(res))` from time to time

It would look nicer.

Semantic whitespace looks nicer than non-semantic whitespace?

No curly braces looks nicer than curly braces.

And that’s just a fact.