'The golden rule of CoffeeScript is: "It's just JavaScript". The code compiles one-to-one into the equivalent JS, and there is no interpretation at runtime'
There really is very little magic with coffeescript. Most of it is syntactic sugar which can be learned at a glance of: http://coffeescript.org/ .
Don't mean to come off as pushy but I think it's well worth learning what coffeescript is. Especially if you are familiar with javascript, as it's a straight upgrade in your toolkit.
As an additional testimony, I've actually been learning coffeescript without really knowing JavasScript, and it has actually gone fairly well. For the most part it's intuitive, and if you're willing to be a little frustrated figuring out some of the syntax changes it can be rewarding.
