[hrwl]

I have never understood the focus on speed as a selling point for Node. It may well be very fast, but it seems to me that the primary selling points would be the ability to share code between client and server and that you can start coding server side without learning a new language if all you know is JavaScript.

[saidajigumi]

First off, while some sharing between client and server happens, that tends to be an edge case in my experience. The roles of client and server, and APIs available to each, are rather different. I.e. the environment of the browser and node.js server aren't homogenous.

Second, "start coding in XXX without learning a new language" is a terrible selling point. I've seen this thinking appeal to misguided PHB-types and witnessed the result: immense organizational damage. In my experience, this isn't a necessary or sufficient selling point to good developers. Learning a new language just isn't that hard, and a big part of a shift like this is actually in learning the new environment's paradigms, APIs, and best practices.

To make the latter point more strongly: if you're having doubts about your ability to pick up a new language, definitely take some time to learn a few new languages. Do a tutorial, play with a few small projects, enough to get the flavor of the language. Your hackery will benefit immensely from this, even when you return to your primary language.

[pcwalton]

Compared to Python and Ruby, node.js is quite fast by the simple virtue of having a JIT (in the most common implementation anyway; of course there are JITs for Python and Ruby but they aren't the mainline implementation).

[codygman]

Which is a shame, since PyPy is really an excellent project.

[ebiester]

I never thought of it as "faster-than-thou" but rather "faster than you expect" and "fast enough for real work."