Even with coffeescript or sweetjs, which gives a lot of syntactic sugar to Javascript, I still prefer Ruby or Python.
So why would I choose Javascript in the back end of a web app?
Let's start by thinking about the front end. While it's true that you can choose whatever language you like for the back end, you really don't have a choice for the front end. If you want to build a modern web app you have to use Javascript. (Yes I know, you can use a framework like gwt where you write all of your front end code in Java, but looking at the trends it's obviously not a solution for the future)
Learning Javascript takes time. A lot of time. There are many tools and libraries available to help with various things like unit testing, minifying the code, handle older browsers and what not. Not to mention all of the different mv* frameworks, utility libraries and template engines. I've now spent a year trying to master the Javascript echo system, but I still feel I've only skimmed the surface.
Recruiting a good programmer is hard these days. A good Javascript programmer is a lot harder. But try to find a good Javascript programmer who also have mastered your specific back end (perhaps Java + Spring MVC + Hibernate + many more)? That's almost impossible. That's the reason why a majority of the projects you see will have two separate teams: one building the front end and another one building the back end.
Having separate teams for the front end and the back end present a whole bunch of deadline related problems.
It's obvious during the sprint planning: some sprints will mostly be back end related tasks while the front end team more or less waits for the back end, and other sprints will be the other way around.
Or the back end team spend time building mock ups which, even in the cases where the mock ups work fine until the real functionality is implemented, is time spent on things that will never be put into production.
Other times two or more developers will be sick or on vacation. If both of them are on the same team it could jeopardize the deadline since you can't replace them with developers from the other team.
If you choose Node for the back end and Javascript for the front end, you can have one team of developers, all of them jumping between different parts of the application when needed.
Do you want to know a secret?
Your front end developers already use Node. They just haven't told you about it. Go ahead and ask them if they're using Grunt. Or Bower. Or perhaps Browserify. Or npm. All of these are using Node under the hood. Your front end developers already have the tools necessary to build a Javascript application using Node, and most of them will be delighted if they can use the same tools to build your back end.
To boldly go where many men has gone before!
Go ahead and try it, and you will have one team of developers that is a lot happier, is delivering more functionality in less time and writes less lines of code.
You should have a really good reason not to choose Node for your back end!
Your front end developers already use Node. They just haven't told you about it. Go ahead and ask them if they're using Grunt. Or Bower. Or perhaps Browserify. Or npm. All of these are using Node under the hood. Your front end developers already have the tools necessary to build a Javascript application using Node, and most of them will be delighted if they can use the same tools to build your back end.
To boldly go where many men has gone before!
Go ahead and try it, and you will have one team of developers that is a lot happier, is delivering more functionality in less time and writes less lines of code.
You should have a really good reason not to choose Node for your back end!
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