My initial reaction when hearing the soundtrack (I was a conference attendee) was to walk over to the stage to see if that was really Scooter playing. The lyrics just didn't seem nearly as offensive as most people apparently find them in light of this clearly being either the actual Scooter or someone copying them - I'm assuming the latter, because the lyrics seem a bit too juvenile even for Scooter, but knowing the band and their typical over-the-top raver campiness certainly mitigated the offensiveness of the incident. It was still fantastically embarrasing to watch, but I didn't feel especially offended as a woman at a tech conference.
The stage, btw, was in the middle of the conference venue, and this performance kicked off the conference party, just after the talks had finished for the day. The atmosphere in the room as it was happening was mostly one of embarrassed disbelief that Microsoft's PR department had apparently stereotyped the lot of us as tasteless brogrammers - with the exception of a few already drunk brogrammers clearly enjoying themselves in front of the stage.
Oh, don't get me wrong, there was a fair bit of sexism in that performance, in the sense that whoever wrote it clearly has a very specific idea of what his audience is like: socially inept males. You know, developers. I was just too busy being offended as a developer being faced with proof of what sales people think of us to consider being offended as a woman, but the sexism is definitely there and should be addressed.
Some of the details I've heard described as sexist, though - like how the dancers are apparently "scantily clad" - seem to be more the result of mob rage than any form of rational thought.
Just to clarify: That atrocity wasn't organised by the conference, they'd just agreed to give Microsoft (their biggest sponsor) the stage for a bit to do their big Azure announcement. There's certainly a lesson for conference organisers in there about how much you let your sponsors get involved in the conference, but what happened on stage was still all Microsoft's fault.
Also just to clarify: As a woman who was actually present in the room when Microsoft decided to jump the shark, I don't feel especially offended by this (with the exception of the line about Lea Verou, which is beyond creepy). As a developer, though, I'm deeply offended that someone in Microsoft's marketing department could imagine we'd go for this kind of trash. That performance speaks volumes about the developer stereotypes sales people nurture, and that is especially offensive coming from a company like Microsoft, where you'd think company culture should perhaps lean a little more towards respecting the people who create the actual value the company thrives on.
In the case of CoffeeScript, the appeal, in my mind, is that it's _not_ a brand new language, it's just an improved syntax and some extra language features over what is essentially plain old JavaScript. Anyone who already grasps the fundamental concepts of JavaScript can master CoffeeScript in a matter of hours. Of course, the syntax is a matter of taste, and one might prefer something like JavaScript 1.8, which comes with the same new language features as CoffeeScript, and more. But some of us (and I suspect we come mostly from Python and Ruby) prefer the concise syntax of CoffeeScript over all those curly braces and semicolons.
Oh, I'm absolutely not trying to bash Brendan. The fact that he managed to produce anything at all in the short time he had is profoundly impressive on its own, and the core of genius that exists in between the Bad Parts is worthy of all kinds of admiration. Also, the way I understand it, he originally intended to make a Scheme implementation for the browser - unsuccessfully, alas, but it still suggests he may well be the most amazing man in web history, even if he does know how to use a razor.
The point of the JS bashing in the slides is that the Bad Parts do exist, and CoffeeScript does a great job of routing around them, as does Strict Mode.
The stage, btw, was in the middle of the conference venue, and this performance kicked off the conference party, just after the talks had finished for the day. The atmosphere in the room as it was happening was mostly one of embarrassed disbelief that Microsoft's PR department had apparently stereotyped the lot of us as tasteless brogrammers - with the exception of a few already drunk brogrammers clearly enjoying themselves in front of the stage.