Unless your only experience is 1999 style FTP with shared hosting and you've never used anything else, I don't know how you can claim that `node server.js` or running your Cargo-built server.exe is somehow harder or more complicated.
For example, PHP is complicated enough that people use WAMP/MAMP.exe just for local development.
"Given a web server" seems a pretty big caveat. I'm not a big node cheerleader (even though I work in it day to day), but it doesn't need to be given a web server to achieve the rest of this claim.
For example, PHP is complicated enough that people use WAMP/MAMP.exe just for local development.