CRUD: Node vs. Rails
I'm building the site to serve a niche segment of the social dating marketplace. It will be profiles, email, a lot of uploading and viewing of pictures. I want my users to primarily access the site through mobile devices but there will be a desktop version as a fall-back. The major sites in this space have a lot of customers but don't seem to be keeping up with the times. Go to any of them and you'll think you've gone back in time seven years. They've also all been very slow to get on the mobile bandwagon. As for me, up until three years ago I was a web developer. I'd started out as a Unix sys-admin before moving on to web development with ColdFusion and then ASP.NET (I hate Microsoft technologies but that's what my company used.). I learned just enough JavaScript to get by. More recently I've read the "pickaxe" book and a couple of Ruby books and I must say I like Ruby a lot.
My biggest concern is that speed, which has never been Rails's strong suit, is critical for mobile users. My thought was that even if Node wasn't built with CRUD/BASE apps in mind, if you can still create such apps with Node, why not use it and eliminate that worry right off the bat? Second, both Rails and Node will have steep learning curves. If I'm going to invest a lot of time in learning a framework, why not learn Node and get in near the "ground floor?" Knowing it will also give me the flexibility in the future to build real-time social apps that RoR isn't suited for.
Ruby/Rails Pros: - More mature technology - Great community - Faster development time due to "convention over configuration" - A lot of books, blogs, etc. on Ruby on Rails - I like Ruby
Ruby on Rails Cons: - Blocked threads and GC can impact performance and require more infrastructure (= more $) - Less flexibility due to "convention over configuration" - Configuring servers appears to be challenging at times
Node Pros: - Performance shouldn't be an issue - One language (JavaScript) on both client and server - Growing and enthusiastic community
Node Cons: - Better suited for real-time apps that require a persistent browser/server connection than for CRUD apps - Event-based will require learning curve - Not 1.0 yet so libraries, etc. will be changing a lot - Frameworks (like Express) are less mature than Rails - Less documentation and just a couple of books (more coming) - I don't hate JavaScript but it seems somewhat "ugly" compared to Ruby