Coffee Script for the Microsoft Soul

So the CoffeeScript... It looks cool, it sounds cool, it kind of makes sense, it's everything but one - it is impossible to understand how to get started. It literally took me 6 hours before the world has heard my first "Hello". After perfectly designed, scrupulously executed and very visually appealing Knockout.JS tutorials (kudos! kudos!) it was the most bitter disappointment. All resources I went through jumped straight to the code of wicked cleverness and elegance but were missing one tiny small simple thing - to show how the damn CoffeeScript reference syntax should look like in the HTML page!...
I am not that Node.js-inclined yet and  and for long miserable hours I began regretting to belong to an inferior race of .NET developers. Unlikely light shed from IBM: the truly My First Cup of CoffeeScript. At least I've seen some code working.
Now about the tools. At the time I am stuck with Visual Studio 2010 on Windows XP (so no Visual Studio 2012 for me!). "Cool stuff can be done only with cool tools" says I and looks for non-Microsoft alternatives. Unfortunately WebStorm did not work well for me. The code got a proper syntax highlight but that's about it - I couldn't make it compile and community offered me to learn Node.js, command-line tools and Voodoo craft. Thankfully to an  excellent Mindscape plugin Visual Studio 2010 got coffinated without a hitch (did not get highlighting yet). At least now I am finally on the road.