>I'm a backend guy, I don't understand how to set up node
I understand that Node is mostly known as a frontend tool and Rails uses it for that, but as far as I remember Node was as least initially developed to bring JavaScript runtime to backends.
Even without a package manager node is just a node.exe under Windows, and I think you just have to download and unpack npm and then put node and npm into your PATH environment variable.
I recently set up a new Win11 laptop and all it took was download Node and install it via the installer. You’re up and running in 90 seconds. Yarn was another 30 seconds (npm i yarn). Even Ruby works well with RubyInstaller, and you can normally develop Rails without WSL if you really want to.
I understand that Node is mostly known as a frontend tool and Rails uses it for that, but as far as I remember Node was as least initially developed to bring JavaScript runtime to backends.
Even without a package manager node is just a node.exe under Windows, and I think you just have to download and unpack npm and then put node and npm into your PATH environment variable.