Your latter paragraph seems a bit fuddy as people 'just dipping in and out' would never have to have contended with the iojs 'name' any more than Python/Ruby/PHP people have to switch to a different VM every time one is announced (e.g. PyPy/Rubinius/Hack).
I'd agree with your first paragraph in that Node is a bit lower-level out of the box and probably takes more effort to get started building a web-app, but I think the time invested jumping in at that low-level is actually useful vs diving in at a higher 'framework level' with some of the other popular web languages.
Also it does have superior installer/package-manager/deployment stories compared to say ... Python & Django, which does have an impact on ROI.
I'd agree with your first paragraph in that Node is a bit lower-level out of the box and probably takes more effort to get started building a web-app, but I think the time invested jumping in at that low-level is actually useful vs diving in at a higher 'framework level' with some of the other popular web languages.
Also it does have superior installer/package-manager/deployment stories compared to say ... Python & Django, which does have an impact on ROI.