Articles like these often imply how node is infiltrating the same space that JAVA takes up. Java to the best of my knowledge does not have a repl.

Nothing special about it, but a REPL is almost a must for me. Python hooked me on them. (And I love IPython - especially IPython Notebook).

I have the impression that he didn't realize that Node had it and was surprised it did, not that the other languages don't typically have it yet Node does