I cant answer for keithwhor I think websocket support is a huge + for picking nodejs.
Lately rails got their socket support, and python3 has been getting better support through async, but in both those languages, I've long felt its been pretty experimental, and there simply hasnt been a performant option available that has a good opinionated framework.
Nodejs has performance going for it at least if you look at the language benchmarks, and now with ES6, it feels like the language is finally starting to shape up.
Lately rails got their socket support, and python3 has been getting better support through async, but in both those languages, I've long felt its been pretty experimental, and there simply hasnt been a performant option available that has a good opinionated framework.
Nodejs has performance going for it at least if you look at the language benchmarks, and now with ES6, it feels like the language is finally starting to shape up.