So, ignore the async arguments, because everybody else (mostly) can do that too. The things I like about it are NPM, which is the package manager and is quite

So, ignore the async arguments, because everybody else (mostly) can do that too. The things I like about it are NPM, which is the package manager and is quite handy--maybe a bit better than bundler for what it does. Writing extensions in C/C++ is not hard to do. Extending node with your own Javascript code and bundling that as a library for others is not hard at all (see NPM). It actually runs on Windows with a minimum of wailing and gnashing of teeth. You can do remote debugging of a server with some sanity. It plays with messaging libraries (zmq, sockjs, etc.) very well. Grunt is awesome for running tests and not being makefiles. There is a pretty cool LDAP client/server library available for it. ~ That said, there are some things that bug me. Javascript has some nasty edges, and anything you don't like about Javascript won't go away with node. Async callback spaghetti hell will happen unless you use something like promises via Q, and it will suck. It's a young platform, and nobody quite seems to have Rails or CodeIgniter or whatever for Node yet--too many contenders currently. There is no standard ORM yet, and has the same issues as above: many choices, no winners. Node devs can be derpy sometimes (usually around threading, fibers, rediscovering basic principles of operating systems engineering, etc.) It's a loveable derpiness though. Express (a pretty standard Sinatra-like web server for node) can die in a fire: its docs are bad and the devs should feel bad (and it's soon to be abandoned, it looks like, as there is yet another new shiny incarnation of it on the way.). ~ It is quite good at prototyping at hackathons, though.