Hmm, I would reckon node.js is popular because of its inherent simplicity and tapping the greater javascript community, which is by far the most vibrant and ene

Hmm, I would reckon node.js is popular because of its inherent simplicity and tapping the greater javascript community, which is by far the most vibrant and energetic I have seen. The things that it introduced - asynchronous, modelling as events, single thread execution - are not really new and already exist as libraries/frameworks [varying in increasing complexity] in Python, Java and Ruby. Not that I am knocking node. If anything, its good more people are opening up to alternative, sometimes better, ways of modelling and execution.