Comment by roryokane

The problem is that making a better JavaScript you can actually use is a lot harder than making a better CoffeeScript. If you make a better CoffeeScript, you just have to write one compiler for it, written in JavaScript. If you make a better JavaScript, you have to lobby all of the major browser vendors to accept it. And then you have to wait for the browser teams to write the compiler. And even if you write the compilers yourself really fast for all of the open-source projects, you still have to wait for the Internet Explorer team to upgrade their compiler - you can't speed that up, because IE is closed-source. And finally, you can't safely use that new JavaScript on most sites until a few years later, when most people have upgraded their browsers. Whereas compiled CoffeeScript runs on even old browsers.