Question

Does anyone know why code within the object literal the “@” (this) references the enclosing object rather than the immediate?

class Example extends Backbone.View
  render: ->
    test =
      num: 10
      nextNum: @num + 1 # References "Example" not "test"

Answer 1

You are calling a Hash constructor, and sending params to the constructor. I see this code similar (maybe no the same) to this one:

var test = new Hash({ num: 10, nextNum: this.num + 1 });

I think in the above example you can see clearly that this is making reference to the outer object and not to the test instance itself, among other things because the test instance is still not created.

In the example above you would resolve the issue like this:

var num = 10;
var test = new Hash({ num: num, nextNum: num + 1 });

So moving this to your case I think you should solve it in a similar way:

class Example extends Backbone.View
  render: ->
    num = 10

    test =
      num: num
      nextNum: num + 1