[viscanti]

Node is popular because the initial learning curve is so easy, but I think it's a bit deceiving. There's a considerable step up from writing a basic node app and building a full "real world" app.

When you first start out, you don't realize that flow control is going to be an issue, you don't realize that you're likely going to need to figure out how to do stream processing. Those aren't especially difficult to learn, but it's a delayed learning curve. You don't know that you'll need them until you run into a dead end. There are libraries/modules that help with that now, but it's not trivial to figure out which is needed (at least not for someone just getting started).

Node is an interesting tool, and I think it solves some issues elegantly. I think some people use it for projects it's not suited for, but that happens with every language/framework/tool.