I started a side projects months ago and the first question I agonized over was: 'web app' or 'api app'. We went through all the screen mock ups several times

I started a side projects months ago and the first question I agonized over was: 'web app' or 'api app'. We went through all the screen mock ups several times before any code was laid down. First thing I knew was it was going to be - for me - a lot quicker to just stick with Rails over node. I played with node before and didn't see my project 'needing' it. I thought a lot about using Spine. Still hadn't gotten over the Backbone hump, so that was out. And in the end, I just decided that for prototyping and just getting something ready, I needed to stick with the easy and most productive route and just make it a page to page web app. Most of the world still finds this approach acceptable and I was just trying to not get sucked into the technology vortex. 'Real artists ship' I kept telling myself. I did end up using MooTools which seems so old school now, but it totally works fine and I prefer it over jQuery. I felt like a sorta ajax Rails app here and there would be good enough for what I needed to do. Over the past 8 months, I found pockets of time here and there to put down some code, in spite of a newborn and contracting at a few different startups. I haven't regretted using any of the tech I used and I've been mostly focused on just delivering functionality and getting something ready for people to use. Real artists ship. Will my Rails app handle 100s of requests a second? Probably not. But, I'm going to love having that problem. It will mean that people will actually be using the app and then I can start thinking about how to scale it up/out. The shop I'm working with now has a bunch of young kids that are all about node. I think it's great and they even took an old Rails app and rewrote it in node because no one there knew Rails. Ok, dunno if I woulda done that, but it all boils down to - I think - what people are comfortable with. I'm not that comfortable with node yet. I did see the whole bubbling up error thing and sorta spaghetti code possibilities when i was using it. Like some other posters have said, there are MVC frameworks out there that can alleviate or solve these issues. But at this point I just feel like most apps - most users - will not need or appreciate realtime. I've seen pretty pictures and buttons and ui that have put the sparkle in more people's eyes than if ajax was being used and thusly, realtime. Is everything going that way (to realtime)? Absolutely. Are we there yet? No way. But I definitely see the writing on wall for Rails as a page to page framework. Maybe they'll come up with something - I've already seen evented php frameworks, so no reason to think this will not get sucked in to Rails somehow. And I've been using Rails as an api platform for years already, so the whole api discussion doesn't surprise me. But for now, I think there's still plenty of life left in Rails to make apps and companies on.