[billwscott]

I agree. I am actually not a Java hater :-) In fact I have built 4 distinct Java/JSP frameworks since 1996.

You can really create some very nice frameworks with Java using some of what you say below. The Java framework at PayPal made a few mistakes (in my opinion) that made the environment harder to work in than it should have been.

But I started with needed to rapidly iterate, move between prototype & production easily, take advantage of asynchronous nature of node for our web apps to scale better, simplify the engineering team makeup (not have multiple types of engineers). These all led to deciding to move forward with node.

Oh, and let's face it, recruiting is a little easier with nodejs.