Summary

This chapter wasn't all fun and games, but it was worth it. We installed CoffeeScript and got everything configured properly. We also tried out some command-line tools to see how CoffeeScript development works, and to whet our appetites for more. We:

• Walked through the steps of installing Node.js (the platform that CoffeeScript uses to run)

• Installed CoffeeScript itself

• Tried out the CoffeeScript console, and learned to compile files with the command-line tool

• Built a very simple web page, and learned how to use the command-line tool to automatically recompile when we change our CoffeeScript files

Now we're all set up and ready to dive into the language itself, which is exactly what we'll do in the next chapter! We'll start by learning the basic syntax of CoffeeScript, and we'll get to see how it works and how it is related to JavaScript. We'll learn about variables, functions, loops, data structures, and more, and we'll get to play around with a lot of code samples. I hope you've got your command line ready!