| One caveat before commenting is that I haven't written a major app in Node.js and I use Python most of the time (vs. Java). I don't think the decision to use Node.js should be based on the fact it uses Javascript. Currently, Javascript has a much more interesting ecosystem than it has at any other time. Just as Rails took many collective practices and managed to communicate them clearly to a huge group of developers, I think a similar trend is happening in Javascript. From this perspective, Node.js is appealing because it rides atop this Javascript revolution with tools like Coffeescript, Backbone, etc. Outside of the language decision, I think people are choosing to use Node.js b/c of its programming model. There are many applications that are relatively easy to code for when you can assume a constant connection between two processes. Where Node.js seems to excel is in these service level, socket based servers that may or may not have a web component. Likewise, Node.js also aims to be very nix friendly in that it tries to use simple processes for scaling instead of relying on more complicated application / language specific tools. This adherence to nix patterns is also very advantageous to some people. Finally, as people start finding use cases where async really is a good idea, Node.js ends up being a decent option. Having done some async programming in Python, it is very difficult because the async assumption needs to be made throughout in order to avoid blocking. My impression is that the experience in other languages is similar, where no library is truly able to make the async paradigm seamless. Node.js has been written from scratch to support this model and many developers understand it via their Javascript experience. It therefore can be a good option when compared to including something like Stackless, EventMachine, etc. in their applications. I think the key point here is that Node.js has managed to hit something of a sweet spot in that it is async, uses a language that is having something of a renaissance and uses *nix to make its integration obvious. Again, I don't use Node.js very heavily at all, but that is my impression as to why people would choose it over other technologies. |