I recently wrestled with the idea of using NodeJS for any side projects. I touched Ruby/Rails in the past for a few times (on-off between small works) and never really felt excited or see it as something "beautiful" because at the end of the day, we, developer, still have to debug our own buggy code.

After a few strings of drama in the NodeJS land, a few chat with friends who used NodeJS in production, and seeing the pattern of BigCo who use NodeJS only for glue/front-end/gateway appserver, I'm pretty close to settle with Rails.

I admire DHH for his dedication to the framework for so long (since 2004). You don't see that type of dedication in the NodeJS land. Yes, NodeJS is still new, but a few BDFL/leaders of important NodeJS projects had left the boat already. One of the premier NodeJS vendors, StrongLoop, always mired with controversy (I happened to know a few people who worked for a company that was acquired by StrongLoop).

Building long-term side-project requires a stable platform because of the time limit (outside office hour + other responsibilities). Dealing with unstable but "sexy" technology is not a good choice.