Not quite; @bar is "this.bar", and is an unambiguous reference, not just "bar". In Ruby, because self can be implicit, it's literally just "bar" in both cases, and Ruby gives the local variable precedence over the method name. You can still invoke the method via self.bar, but accessing the method as just "bar" is shadowed by the variable. Additionally, even though the method may be invoked by referencing bar, you can't redefine the method by assigning a new method to bar. Neither Javascript nor Coffeescript has that behavior.

Here's a better example:

Ruby:

    def bar
      "I called bar!"
    end

    def foo
      puts bar
      bar = "I manually assigned bar"
      return bar
    end

    puts foo()
    puts bar()

    # =>

    I called bar!
    I manually assigned bar
    I called bar!

Coffeescript:

    bar = ->
      "I called bar!"

    foo = ->
      console.log bar()
      bar = "I manually assigned bar!"
      return bar

    console.log foo()
    console.log bar()

    # =>

    I called bar!
    I manually assigned bar!
    TypeError: string is not a function