First off, let me state that I in no way wish to diminish the accomplishments of the authors of RailwayJS in making these comments. I think they've built an inevitable framework given that Rails was (and likely still is) the most popular open source web framework (at least as far as the HN/startup crowd goes) and of course why not give developers the same abstractions they have with their old favorite when a new thing comes along. But here's a constructive observation:
Node.js isn't a framework. AND it's not a programming language. Node is ostensibly a set of libraries and a runtime environment. I've been to a few Node meetups over the past few years, and inevitably people (not just newbies btw) will ask "what will be the Rails for Node?" But I think making this analogy is wrong. It's wrong for two main reasons, the first of which is that it implicitly compares Node.js to Ruby, which is a category mistake. More importantly though I'd argue, it's wrong because making the Rails for Node analogy deprives the developer (you!) of the opportunity to allow an emergent programming paradigm to change the way you think about programming! So how should Node do that? My fantasy for how Node.js will evolve in the next few years is that it will be a series of node packages which can be easily dropped in and out of my programs. I believe that the goal of the third-party node package development community should be to encourage this modularity, because I think it is the right abstraction for what Node.js actually is, and not necessarily what some people might wish it was. It's easy enough to set up EventMachine in Rails and then you can use your familiar stack, but I'd encourage anyone looking to use Node.js to fully embrace it and use it as an opportunity to explore new workflows, and not just try to fit your old stack into an event loop.
Node.js isn't a framework. AND it's not a programming language. Node is ostensibly a set of libraries and a runtime environment. I've been to a few Node meetups over the past few years, and inevitably people (not just newbies btw) will ask "what will be the Rails for Node?" But I think making this analogy is wrong. It's wrong for two main reasons, the first of which is that it implicitly compares Node.js to Ruby, which is a category mistake. More importantly though I'd argue, it's wrong because making the Rails for Node analogy deprives the developer (you!) of the opportunity to allow an emergent programming paradigm to change the way you think about programming! So how should Node do that? My fantasy for how Node.js will evolve in the next few years is that it will be a series of node packages which can be easily dropped in and out of my programs. I believe that the goal of the third-party node package development community should be to encourage this modularity, because I think it is the right abstraction for what Node.js actually is, and not necessarily what some people might wish it was. It's easy enough to set up EventMachine in Rails and then you can use your familiar stack, but I'd encourage anyone looking to use Node.js to fully embrace it and use it as an opportunity to explore new workflows, and not just try to fit your old stack into an event loop.