This is what I mean. The code that uses the callbacks go first, the callbacks themselves are all named and access to closures withstanding, not nested.

      // this is all the code that is used,
      var _changes = follow(couchOpts);
      _changes.on('change', onChange);
      _changes.on('error', onError);
      _changes.resume();
  
      // from here is just named functions
      function onChange(data) {
        _changes.pause();
        save(data.seqId, saveFn);
      }
      
      function saveFn(err, entity) {
        if (err) { return console.log(err); }
        _changes.resume();
      }
      
      function onError(err) {
        console.log(err);
      }

Why not do the reverse, and declare the inner functions before?

coffeescript forces you to do that, and I do use it that way sometimes in CS.

I don't do it as much as i would with plain js, because the function definition feels less awkward, but I do still prefer named functions over anonymous ones. even if the name only exists in the local scope.

You are just asking for race condition issues with that type of "solution."

Are you referring to a case like this?

    {
      f();
      var a = 3;
      function f() {
        console.log(a);
      }
    }

That will print "undefined" because the entire function f() is hoisted and callable in the first line, but the variable a has not yet been assigned the value. That's not a race condition (those are related to timing in concurrent systems) but is certainly the sort of counter-intuitive visibility that makes me prefer to use function expressions most of the time.

You can still pass in callbacks to them. So if I got the parent's intent right, you've got:

  function bunchOfAsyncThings(callback) {
    var function1, function2;
  
    function1 = function (callback) {
      // do stuff here, then do callback
      function2(callback);
    };
    
    function 2 = function (callback) {
      // done with everything
      callback();
    };
   
    function1(callback);
  }

(Edit: formatting)

how, exactly, is that going to cause race conditions?