[chrisennis]

As someone who has built APIs on node+express, I love it for small lightweight API's that require very little processing beyond getting data from a database and returning it.

I have gone through much frustration though when I needed to use it for an API that required processing that only made sense to handle synchronously. At that point, it becomes less practical.

[general_failure]

For sync processing just use node modules - step or async. After all sync processing is a subset of async processing.

[ishbits]

Why would one use Express to a purely services based app instead of just using straight up node?

[nateweiss]

Also consider using Connect (on which Express is built) as an in-between point. You get stuff like the Sinatra-style routing, but without the presentation-tier stuff like template support, etc. I've had good luck with it, FWIW.