I never said JavaScript is best language to use server-side. That would be insane. I'm just saying that it worked well for the browser (mostly because it was forced on us, but still) and node is an experiment to try the same thing on the server.

It's a lot better than writing C, (which is what Ryan was doing before starting node) since JS has closures, anonymous functions and other functional niceties that make event based programming much easier.

The fact that you can now code your server-side code in the same language and paradigm as your client-side code is a huge bonus, but was not the reason node was created. V8 is an amazing VM and it's a language that lots of talented developers know. Why not let them loose on the server and see what comes out of this talent.

Given the constraint of using JavaScript on the server, node is the best solution. If you don't want that constraint, then maybe erlang or something with no-shared state is a better solution.