Totally true. That's like saying the Ruby on Rails exists because Ruby is somehow deficient.

But, your analogy is flawed; the situations are incomparable.

You're not forced to use Rails for your server application, many other software exists as well as Rails: Django, PHP, etc. However you /are/ forced to use Javascript, CSS and the DOM; Unless you're a Big Browser Vendor and can try and coerce support (and even so, the amount of websites made in something like Dash is pitiful afaik). People made frameworks and libraries that make it bearable (SCSS, JQuery, etc), but that doesn't mean everything is solved...

That's a totally different analogy altogether. The argument expressed on that page isn't that there is a lack of choices, but that the choices are inherently flawed (and somehow "fixed" by frameworks that lie on top).

This seems to basically be the argument for preferring compile-to-js languages over vanilla javascript, even though by definition any advantages in the former have to exist in the latter.

Yet if I were to call coffeescript an overly complex javascript framework, people would probably strenuously disagree. But that is what it amounts to.

I disagree, but not strenuously :)

Purescript compiles down to javascript but helps save programmers from themselves by introducing a better type system as well as great data structures, and functional paradigms

Typescript adds static typing and OOP

CoffeeScript...is syntactic sugar? (okay maybe I agree with the coffeescript sentiment)

Fair enough.

Although I don't entirely agree that compiling a statically typed language into javascript really helps much, since the end result is still... javascript in a browser.

But the last time I tried to defend that I got almost universally disagreed with, so I'll concede that the process might have value I just don't see.