Oh wait — damn, I was reverse-reading this diff. I agreed with you the whole time. Sorry about that.

It turns out that the `==` is put there by the CoffeeScript compiler as the emulation of default arguments, [see here][1].

[1]: https://github.com/matthieua/jackInTheBox/blob/master/js/jack-in-the-box.coffee#L22

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure why this function is there in the first place (maybe as part of the boilerplate). I removed it [my fork][2] and it doesn't seem to cause any trouble.

[2]: https://github.com/attilaolah/jackInTheBox/tree/compiler-optimisations