Is this actually true? Have there been actual widespread complaints about, say, TypeScript's quality because CofeeScript was labeled similarly?
TBH I do not have too much contact with TS other than its type definitions, so the experience I describe may not be relevant to TypeScript. I have repeatedly seen it for languages that provide a different set of abstractions than JS, though.
After wrestling to get get purescript code within a factor of four difference between IE 11 and modern Chrome, I think the suspicion a lot of folks with a background in JS have for "compiled" v. "transpiled" is well deserved.
Just because you target a runtime doesn't mean the nuts and bolts of ergonomics like existing library usage, profiling, and debugging are covered well.