Sharing Rip: A modern CoffeeScript-inspired language with several nice enhancements

[shreeve]

Hi CoffeeScript community,

I wanted to share a project that wouldn't exist without CoffeeScript's inspiration. I've been working on Rip, a compiler that takes many ideas from CoffeeScript's elegant syntax and applies them with some different technical choices.

What it is:

• CoffeeScript-inspired syntax (significant whitespace, implicit returns, etc.)
• Compiles to ES2022 JavaScript
• Zero dependencies (includes its own parser generator)
• Self-hosting (compiles itself)

Some technical differences:

• Uses S-expressions as IR instead of AST nodes
• Pure ES6 with modules and classes and supports most traditional CoffeeScript and modern ES2022 syntax
• Dual optional syntax (both ? soak and ?. ES6 chaining)
• Built-in Bun loader for direct .rip file execution

Why share this here:
CoffeeScript proved that JavaScript could have a better syntax, and that vision directly inspired this work. I thought some folks here might find the technical approach interesting, especially the s-expression IR and the self-hosting with zero dependencies.

Repository: https://github.com/shreeve/rip-lang

This isn't meant as a replacement or criticism of CoffeeScript—it's a different experiment for those who might be curious about alternative approaches to similar goals.

Thanks for all the inspiration over the years!

[GeoffreyBooth]

Thanks for the announcement! Closing as this isn’t actionable for CoffeeScript.

[shreeve]

@GeoffreyBooth - I understand why you closed the earlier issue. I wanted to reach out separately to share something I've been working on that might interest you as a fellow language designer.

I've built Rip (https://github.com/shreeve/rip-lang), which started as an exploration of modernizing CoffeeScript's foundations. Some highlights that emerged from this work:

Technical approach:

• ES6+ native compilation (targeting modern runtimes)
• S-expression-based AST for cleaner code generation
• 43KB compressed browser bundle with full REPL
• SLR(1) parser using a custom parser generator (Solar)
• Significantly reduced output size compared to CS2.7

Language features:

• Ruby-inspired regex operators (=~, regex indexing)
• Nullish coalescing, optional chaining
• Modern destructuring patterns
• Better alignment with ES6+ semantics

I'm not suggesting this should influence CoffeeScript's direction - you have your own vision and community. But as someone deeply familiar with the design space, I thought you might find the approaches interesting, particularly around the parser architecture and code generation strategies.

The docs are at the repo if you're curious. Either way, thanks for maintaining CoffeeScript - it's been foundational for many of us.

[edemaine]

I'd suggest adding a one-line description of Rip to https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/List-of-languages-that-compile-to-JS (as I did for Civet).

It might also make sense to open a Discussions forum for this repo, where posts like this could better live.

[shreeve]

@edemaine - Thank you for the link, I added an entry there. Great work on Civet -- looks amazing!