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By this logic no language is a real language other than JavaScript, since as we've seen, you can make just about anything "simply compile down" to JavaScript.

Let me put it another way. If I were to write a separate runtime that directly executed CoffeeScript (without JS as an intermediate step), would you then be satisfied that it is in fact a real language?

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Now that you say it, and I think about it more, I guess you're right. It does add features like list comprehension and pattern matching, and the compilation really is ambiguous.

Coffeescript doesn't add pattern matching.

Coffeescript has it, though it's formally called destructuring: http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/#destructuring

destructuring assignment is not really pattern matching, as the latter allows flow control and the former does not.

Ahem. That'd be "destructuring".

http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:destructuring

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