Node.js vs. Opa: Web Framework Showdown. A typical web project today still involves a programming language for the server coding, usually with a web framework (or two or more) on top of it, some JavaScript coding for the client-side code, a database with its query language (SQL, etc.), and so on.
That is a lot of technologies to master, set up and (try to) integrate. No wonder so many developers are tired even before they get a "Hello world" app working. Many tools makers realized that this is not the way to go and started working on unifying some of those aspects in more comprehensive solutions for the Web (Google Web Toolkit is one result of such efforts). Node.js. The Opa Framework for Javascript.