I'd be curious which things were missing in Node. I realise gratuitous detail doesn't make for a great blog post but if Node.js is missing things that stopped development of an app it would be useful for the Node community to know what they are.
Mentioning "immature packages" and "testing" is fine, but I'd really like to know what makes testing on RoR better than, say, testing with Mocha.
I'd also be really interested in the experiences of trying to cache with Node. I think while it's possible to do it's definitely a place that could be improved.
IMO, things like a good ORM(or ODM) are still way too far off in NodeJS. I am aware of mogooseJS, but it is very far from the power provided by ActiveRecord and Mongoid.
Also mocha is powerful, but if you have a look at capybara and rspec, they are much more powerful and friendly.
The final thing in my opinion is the speed of development. With rails you go to devise, and you have authentication. I am aware of the presence of a similar authentication system for nodeJS but I am not very sure if that works with mongoose js and is as extensible as devise is. And then there is the rails console, which makes trying out things real easy and fun.
I started looking into libraries for a Node-based model layer this weekend. The two most interesting after my initial reading about are Tubbs [1] and Resourceful [2].
I won't have a chance to actually play with them properly until this weekend unfortunately. Anyone else have any experience with these two (or other options)?
Personally id say Node and Rails simply shouldnt be compared in any way. They are just too different technologies. So node shouldnt even be concerned about trying to be rails at all. People are going to use whatever they want to regardless. So node should just do what its own users need. And thats it.
Mentioning "immature packages" and "testing" is fine, but I'd really like to know what makes testing on RoR better than, say, testing with Mocha.
I'd also be really interested in the experiences of trying to cache with Node. I think while it's possible to do it's definitely a place that could be improved.