node.js is basically the JavaScript equivalent of Python's Twisted or Ruby's EventMachine, an asynchronous server toolkit. If the node.js documentation doesn't

node.js is basically the JavaScript equivalent of Python's Twisted or Ruby's EventMachine, an asynchronous server toolkit. If the node.js documentation doesn't explain it well enough, look at its "rivals", maybe that helps (well, maybe not in the case of Twisted, if I remember correctly).