The author's experience are pretty typical for most newcomers to node (I help run a large JS meetup, so get to meet a lot of them). But I think what many people miss is that the functional programming and dynamic typing aspects of JS (two of the most maligned aspects) turn out to be surprisingly effective, often resulting in simpler, more concise code. Its a different mind-set from the statically typed OO paradigm, and the learning curve isn't exactly easy, but getting comfortable with functional programming and continuation passing style in general is a great skill for any programmer to have.
Do you have any easy-to-grok real world examples/libraries you would recommend? Genuinely curious and want to learn more. The JS code I end up writing is always in a more traditional object-oriented style but I'm usually not entirely satisfied with the end results.
Might also recommend Functional Javascript by Michael Fogus. He uses underscore.js, and avoids re-implementing classic functional patterns (map, reduce, filter, etc).
I understood a lot of functional concepts from Lisp before reading the book. There might be something else you need first if you've had no exposure to FP, But if your basic FP-fu is good, this is a really nice book to read.
