> But the CoffeeScript/Backbone.js route is harder for
  > beginners but in the long run it's a much better choice.

What you say makes no sense. Ok it makes sense, but does not make sense in context of jQuery. jQuery was never intended to be a framework or tool to organize your code. It is just a DOM/events/Ajax library, that's it. Its purpose is completely orthogonal to what Backbone does and even more so to what Coffeescript does. You don't manipulate DOM with Coffeescript or Backbone, but you may use Coffeescript to write your DOM manipulation code and you may use Backbone to organize your code.