I think the switch to an async back-end can be more initial work than many expect. It may take some time to feel as productive, but promises become powerful and became a game changer for me over my previous work with callbacks. Error handling also becomes manageable.

What I really enjoy is jumping into new community and getting to work with tools that have built. Choosing the right ones can make or break an experience. I personally enjoyed working with Express and Bookshelf.js/Knex.

I appreciate the authors perspective, but I also don't think this should deter anyone from trying out Node. I personally have no overwhelming preference to using a Python or Javascript stack.