[jashkenas]

I'm afraid you're getting tripped up by the Backbone.js library, not the language itself...

`this.options` is the options object that was passed when the View was created, and `this.el` is the default DOM element that wraps the View. For more info, see:

http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/#View-constructor

http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/#View-el

[Cushman]

This is the major problem with CoffeeScript: it seems so straightforward, there must be something wrong with it.