> Why should I learn Node instead?

Node is a gateway to Javascript fluency for people that get a headache dealing with the DOM in the browser. You can write command-line scripts, run them with "node [scriptname]", and learn.

Having done that, I've found that Node is great for fast prototyping of servers, even if those are going to be written in C/C++ ultimately. In not-super-formal work environment, you can very quickly write something that runs with the correct behavior, and treat that as the spec for the final performant code.