I used both and it seems you're right that staying within the node.js+npm ecosystem is hugely beneficial. I can treat my derby project just like any other node.

I used both and it seems you're right that staying within the node.js+npm ecosystem is hugely beneficial. I can treat my derby project just like any other node.js project which have made it much easier to push to platforms like Heroku... It was also a lot easier to get a REST API going with derby since it's so close to express and connect whereas I feel like meteor mostly hides the interfaces to node.js packages it uses