"JS modules" (what you're actually referring to are called IIFEs, which stands for "immediately-invoked function expressions" — JS modules are something else, a

"JS modules" (what you're actually referring to are called IIFEs, which stands for "immediately-invoked function expressions" — JS modules are something else, and CoffeeScript doesn't support them) don't have anything to do with importing/exporting code. In browser-CoffeeScript the only way to "import" and "export" code is to make global whatever you intend to export. IIFEs are also pretty orthogonal to Node's module system — they work perfectly fine together, and don't have much to do with each other at all. Not sure why you'd feel the need to disable IIFEs in the CoffeeScript compiler except out of desire for cleanliness since they're an ugly hack in the first place.