I'm willing to bet speed was a factor, but the other thing Ryan noted was the API difference. The article on the Register about SpiderNode (http://www.theregist

I'm willing to bet speed was a factor, but the other thing Ryan noted was the API difference. The article on the Register about SpiderNode (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/20/mozilla_moves_node_dot_js_to_spidermonkey/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/20/mozilla_moves_node_d...) mentions that: > Dahl originally set out to build Node atop Mozilla's SpiderMonkey – the JavaScript engine included with Firefox browser – but this effort didn't last long. After about two days, he switched to Google's V8. "V8 is just a nice, clean library," Dahl told us earlier this year. "It's compact and extracted away from Chrome. It's distributed as its own package, and it's easy to build and it's got a nice header file with nice documentation. It's kind of constrained. It doesn't have dependencies on other things. It seemed much more modern than the Mozilla stuff." I mostly agree about the clean API. It's compartmentalized and makes more sense to me overall. Documentation though... As for maintenance, I'm really hoping it won't be too bad. Once V8Monkey is standing, it shouldn't be terrible to keep up. And so long as Node doesn't start using new or modified APIs, then SpiderNode should be fine.