Not sure why you've been downvoted, because I somewhat agree with you. $12k is not bad for a few months if you happen to live in my country (Hungary, Middle Europe), but the expertise required by a full compiler rewrite is supposed to... cost more.

With that said, I don't mind Rails.app targeting $25k. Let the masses decide if that kind of budget is realistic.

Also bear in mind that the community behind Rails is more mature, and a lot more companies have stake in it being an effective solution than do CoffeeScript, not to mention the fact that Yehuda Katz probably has a bit more reach than Michael Ficarra.

... also also a student's cost of living as opposed to a seasoned software engineer's is probably pretty disparate (for better or worse).