Superficially yes. But there's no real difficulty to one of those problems, and amazing fascinating difficulty to the other.
Getting JavaScript to work as a server side language is about as challenging as getting a crew cab pickup truck to work as a 2 passenger commuting vehicle. [1]
The kinds of things done in demoscene (such as kkrieger) are more like finding a way to use a motorcycle to haul several tons of cargo. (Is that even possible? I don't know, but "Is that even possible?" is PRECISELY the feeling demoscene stuff evokes in the user. It is art.)
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[1]: I'm gonna get in trouble here so I have to say: I don't mean this as an insult to nodejs, since difficulty has nothing to do with utility. But way before nodejs, any novice programmer could have put together such a thing in a weekend by gluing libraries together (e.g., Java had a JavaScript engine for a long time, and that's probably how I would have done it). What nodejs accomplishes is creating a way for people who only have learned JavaScript, of which there are many due to the web, to immediately add server-side coding to their abilities without having to learn a whole new language. I wouldn't use nodejs for my own work, but making programming more accessible is always good.
>>getting some tech (JS) to do something it was never ment to do
That's pretty much my reaction to the entire modern WWW. What started as a way to serve some simple static text has evolved into something that is truly amazing. Using a modern "webapp" like Fusion 360 (3D CAD) is a miracle of technology.
Getting JavaScript to work as a server side language is about as challenging as getting a crew cab pickup truck to work as a 2 passenger commuting vehicle. [1]
The kinds of things done in demoscene (such as kkrieger) are more like finding a way to use a motorcycle to haul several tons of cargo. (Is that even possible? I don't know, but "Is that even possible?" is PRECISELY the feeling demoscene stuff evokes in the user. It is art.)
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[1]: I'm gonna get in trouble here so I have to say: I don't mean this as an insult to nodejs, since difficulty has nothing to do with utility. But way before nodejs, any novice programmer could have put together such a thing in a weekend by gluing libraries together (e.g., Java had a JavaScript engine for a long time, and that's probably how I would have done it). What nodejs accomplishes is creating a way for people who only have learned JavaScript, of which there are many due to the web, to immediately add server-side coding to their abilities without having to learn a whole new language. I wouldn't use nodejs for my own work, but making programming more accessible is always good.