I would probably choose Rails, it gives reasonably more chances to reach the finish line successfully and with less problems, and the "speed downside" is not an issue (see all big websites like Hulu/Basecamp etc). There are also mature solutions to common problems via gems (Devise, CanCan, Omniauth, CarrierWave, ActiveScaffold, Ancestry etc) that get you to the finish line even faster. And programming synchronously is a lot easyer .
There is little reason to use Node unless you do realtime stuff or you foresee concurency issues, and even so, there are alternatives like EventMachine. (The Node ecosystem is maturing, there are packages like Everyauth and such, nevertheless I would choose Rails)
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I would probably choose Rails, it gives reasonably more chances to reach the finish line successfully and with less problems, and the "speed downside" is not an issue (see all big websites like Hulu/Basecamp etc). There are also mature solutions to common problems via gems (Devise, CanCan, Omniauth, CarrierWave, ActiveScaffold, Ancestry etc) that get you to the finish line even faster. And programming synchronously is a lot easyer .
There is little reason to use Node unless you do realtime stuff or you foresee concurency issues, and even so, there are alternatives like EventMachine. (The Node ecosystem is maturing, there are packages like Everyauth and such, nevertheless I would choose Rails)