I think the difference between the Java (let's say EE) ecosystem and the NodeJS ecosystem is how you learn them. In a typical Java EE system, you have to learn

I think the difference between the Java (let's say EE) ecosystem and the NodeJS ecosystem is how you learn them. In a typical Java EE system, you have to learn a lot about the architecture, available libraries and practices before you can really start. With the NodeJS ecosystem, you can get something running in very short order - but while the education is incremental, you still will end up learning a lot of new libraries to build anything substantial. When I built a PoC copy of an existing (and complicated) system, I ended up building most of the functionality of a Java EE application server out of NodeJS components. As an aside, don't confuse Java EE with J2EE - the new enterprise Java system is a far simpler development environment than the old (I almost gave up on enterprise Java myself before this transition).