I tend to agree that a lot of the new-fangled stuff (aka. hipster shit stacks) are generational/cyclic re-hashes of previous techniques, but unlike previous gen

I tend to agree that a lot of the new-fangled stuff (aka. hipster shit stacks) are generational/cyclic re-hashes of previous techniques, but unlike previous generation don't even attempt to adhere to standards or otherwise appeal to ideas such as separation of interface/implementation and interchangeability in general. Supposedly, that's pre-generation POSIX or Java-ish greybeard stuff and we're living in a post-standards era after all. But I think you should re-consider Node.js. JavaScript is based on an ECMA-specified (ISO-adopted even) language with at least three major implementations, plus smaller (yet still highly regarded) ones. The Node.js API is (loosely) based on CommonJS which is as good as it gets in terms of a community API standard for JavaScript.