While I don't think Dart is the most interesting language I've seen (optional types and mirrors aside), CoffeeScript doesn't try to solve any of the problems that Dart is attempting to address.
Of those five, the only one that CoffeeScript doesn't emphasize is "high performance/fast startup", which basically can't be a goal for a language without its own VM or JIT.
It seems to me that focusing on adding this one emphasis to CoffeeScript would make a lot more sense than making yet another not-exactly-Java.
Read closer - those goals are modeled around the 5 perceived problems enumerated below them. Those aren't the kinds of problems that CoffeeScript purports to address at all. CoffeeScript for better or worse is mostly "Just JavaScript"
> Those aren't the kinds of problems that CoffeeScript purports to address at all.
Right. I think Dart's general goals are good, but I think they're wrong about how to go about it. I don't think most of the "problems" they enumerate are actually the obstacles that prevent their listed goals from being achieved. I think they are things that bother programmers whose thinking has been infected by too much Java.
Of those five, the only one that CoffeeScript doesn't emphasize is "high performance/fast startup", which basically can't be a goal for a language without its own VM or JIT.
It seems to me that focusing on adding this one emphasis to CoffeeScript would make a lot more sense than making yet another not-exactly-Java.