this, the notion that CoffeeScript generated code resembles some kind of arcane binary like output is wrong. As knowing the basics of JavaScript is pretty much a requirement for working with CoffeScript I never ever encountered any problems when debugging generated code because is not obfuscated and easy to read and the compiler doesn't do anything you didn't specifically write in your CoffeeScript. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I think compiled CoffeeScript is easier to read then most peoples hand written JS. What makes code unreadable is the Closure compiler which is completely different beast.