I like the fact that Node comes with a small core. I'm tired of vast, bloated, incomprehensible libraries that are going to take me more time to learn how to use than they'll be worth.
But because it comes with a small core, the time you saved will be spent searching and learning userland modules, written with wildly varying degrees of stability and coding styles. Unless, of course, you just use your own, then your time has been spent there. Much more of it.
I'm not trying to put node down, I'm a fan (switched to Go for most of my needs about a year ago, though), but this argument (small core so less to understand) just isn't valid if you're going to do anything more involved than learning the language and writing hello worlds.
