If I could choose I would choose Ruby over Javascript ANY DAY (I am not saying that is better, just that sintax is easier to pick for an hobbyist as me).

But I can't. JS is everywhere and I don't have time to learn several programming languages.

CoffeeScript was a way to make JS more enjoyable to me. You can say that CoffeeScript is still another language to learn but once that is related to JS, you learn both simultaneously, killing two birds with one stone.