Node.js is bigger than Rails

Most of the real world companies will skip Rails and go straight to Node, like they skipped all the DVCS debate and went straight to Git.

One might expect Rails to be a clear winner for the foreseeable future, now that it is seeing a widespread adoption and we are no longer discussing whether it's ready for the enterprise.

However, what everyone is talking about instead is Node.js. One of the reasons Node is big is that JavaScript itself is big, and a completely JS-based web stack amplifies the effect. Besides, geeks are loving it, and JavaScript is now the cool kids' language the way Ruby had been before. Lean MVC in JavaScript? Backbone. Cocoa in JavaScript? SproutCore. Lean JS minifier? Check, and they're laughing at the “gazillion lines of code” of Google Closure Compiler. VMware in JavaScript? That's sort of possible, too.

Companies from hosting providers to traditional PHP-centric shops are now looking into Node. The clients of mine that haven't adopted Rails yet seem to already be more interested in Node than in Rails. And as we've learned recently, even Microsoft is sponsoring the Windows port of Node.

Node seems to be getting the kind of traction Git has: first noone knows about it, then one day everyone is talking about it, and then everyone is using it. We're not there yet, but Node.js looks like the best bet in the coming years.