Starting a new project. It's basically a blogging/commenting system.
We're considering node.js as the back end server. Is node.js ready for this sort of thing or is it too early and experimental?
We need HTTPS and gzip compression - perhaps a front end nginx server could provide this?
What's missing from node.js that would make developing a web app difficult?
From a production ready perspective, we're wondering if it is stable enough for building a commercial app on top of.
Thanks
Node.js is really great. But it's complicated for a production use now. Actually, the API change several times in each version and can be change again a lot of time. So you need fix to a particular version. The migration can be painful.
It's just another tool, with different pros and cons. If your project is planned carefully you shouldn't run into major problems. Node.js is a very active project and it shouldn't be long before it reaches stable. If your team finally decides to use node.js please contribute any findings / solutions / code or any kind of valuable information back to the community while you're at it. That would really help. The more people active, the faster node.js will progress.
It's not ready. It sure is an awesome piece of software but it's not suitable for production use yet. The developer of node.js himself stated in a talk, that it's probably full of bugs and security issues.
This is the talk: http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/05/20/video-dahl/
He recommends that IF it is to be used in a production environment, you should place it behind a stable http proxy like nginx but he discourages doing that at all.
I'll wait for a production release and until then, play with it on my local machine.