Those wanting to succeed with node.js should listen more closely to the parent post. IcedCoffeeScript promises, "Say goodbye to callback pyramids; say adios to massive code rewrites when synchronization requirements change slightly. Say hello to clean, readable, maintainable control flow for network and asynchronous operations!" (http://maxtaco.github.com/coffee-script/)
Personally though, I haven't yet tried/loadtested it, so can't speak to its effectiveness.
In any case, simply using plain CoffeeScript + async + underscore, will greatly cut down on node.js's complexity. Sure, you still have some async callbacks when doing I/O like calling some service, but it's much less awful.
The loss does not come from JS or coffeescript, it comes from everything being done with callback (whether nested or not).