I can't speak for anyone else, but I treat the class macro as pure shorthand. I understand implicitly that "properties" in a "class" are being assigned one at a time on the constrictor's prototype, and frequently use that knowledge for metaprogramming. You call it laziness; I call it nicer syntax.
I understand that puts me in a small boat. In my opinion, people shouldn't use the class macro without knowing what it really does. Actually I'd extend that to say people shouldn't use CoffeeScript at all without an understanding of the JavaScript it compiles to, just as you shouldn't use C without an understanding of the assembly it compiles to... But that's probably wishful thinking. It wouldn't be an improvement for those people to write assembly (or raw JS) instead.
I understand that puts me in a small boat. In my opinion, people shouldn't use the class macro without knowing what it really does. Actually I'd extend that to say people shouldn't use CoffeeScript at all without an understanding of the JavaScript it compiles to, just as you shouldn't use C without an understanding of the assembly it compiles to... But that's probably wishful thinking. It wouldn't be an improvement for those people to write assembly (or raw JS) instead.