I have to admit that my first thought was, "Yawn, yet another social something-something," but then I read the blog post and was pleasantly surprised. I might just sign up.
Btw., the design could use some tweaking. It looks a little like a Microsoft FrontPage template.
Node has a lot of good features, but programmer productivity isn't one of them currently. There are close to zero full-featured frameworks with "the works" (Geddy comes close, but is no longer maintained, and Express is essentially no more than a mini-framework). You simply have to write a lot of code yourself to do stuff that in other frameworks such as Django is included by default. Add to that the fact that deploying a Node site isn't nearly as easy and fast as deploying a PHP site, and you've got a setup that isn't ideal in terms of productivity.
'With Node and a framework like Express, you can understand things at the level of "let me look at this HTTP request and decide how to respond to it."'
Sure, but roughly the same kind of thing is available in most other serverside languages. Python has Flask, Ruby has Sinatra, and PHP also has several mini-frameworks.
Flask seems nice and simple until you need to access a database such as MySQL. With SQLAlchemy it seems like there's a lot more code needed just to perform simple CRUD operations, whereas Django's ORM is really simple. Is there a better alternative to SQLAlchemy? Is it possible to use Django's ORM in Flask?
I like the idea of using a web-based interface for tasks that are normally done in framework code: Altering data structure/models, etc. Drupal already has this (CCK), but it's not exactly a lean/small framework, so it's not the ideal solution unless you actually need the CMS feature (the ability for non-techies to edit content on the website).
Anyway, I think a framework that includes a web-based data handling thing might be a success.
I didn't say they sell our data (although I honestly can't say for sure, since there are a number of things Google employees aren't allowed to talk about). I'm talking about the fact that Google builds huge databases about its users, and the fact that Google is in the US where the authorities have easy access to said databases.
Beats me how anyone would use a computer where both the OS, browser, and major applications are made by the same company - a company whose living depends on making huge databases about its users' personal data - a company that is based in the US where the authorities have easy access to your data.
The privacy implications to using Chromebook are huge, in my opinion.
Rackspace Cloud is (sort of) missing on your list. "Sort of", because Slicehost is on your list, but Slicehost was bought up by Rackspace, and Slicehost will eventually be moved into the Rackspace Cloud brand, as far as I know.
> While it is annoying, it is how he got to where he is.
Not necessarily. For years GoDaddy has had the cheapest non-promotional domain pricing. That's what made a lot of IT-savvy people use GoDaddy despite of its annoying user interface.
Actually, pure PHP (I assume by "pure" you mean "with no framework") is the safest of all, providing that the programmer is experienced. Hackers target known vulnerabilities in popular frameworks/CMSes/etc., so with a homemade mini-framework built by an experienced programmer you're better off security-wise than with a popular framework.
My point is not that you shouldn't use a framework. I personally love Django and two or three PHP frameworks. I just wanted to add a little perspective to the discussion of "pure PHP".
I agree with your stance on Symfony, but it's important to realize that not every PHP framework is like that. Symfony adds a lot of complexity that doesn't necessarily mean lower development time or later flexibility - whereas many other PHP frameworks take a much simpler approach.
TL;DR: The problem is with Symfony, not PHP as a whole.
Sure, alright, but that's supposed to mean faster servers and a smaller footprint, and since one or two people here mentioned that Node doesn't really live up to that, my question is: What does Node offer me in terms of speed and footprint that, say, nginx doesn't?
Btw., the design could use some tweaking. It looks a little like a Microsoft FrontPage template.