No, there are sometimes genuinely new technologies: ideas or frameworks that have not been previously explored. Google's PageRank algorithm is a good example. It's not often that you see genuinely new ideas in programming languages, although it does happen occasionally. Javascript as a language doesn't push any boundaries, although it's an alright language overall.
I don't know what books would be best to learn event driven programming. That would be a good question to have an answer to. My point in suggesting a book is that it's the concepts here that matter, not that you are using a Javascript, Python, Ruby, or C# implementation, or a language built around the idea like Erlang. Once you know the concepts, you can quickly and easily pick up or even build a framework in any language.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that Node and the community isn't doing well. It's just that many of us are quite confused by the massive hype around it. Javascript might be a fine choice in some situations, but in general, on the server side you have many different languages to choose from and many (most?) of them also have competent event driven frameworks available. It would surprise me if most development shops didn't have server side developers who work daily with a language other than Javascript.
Most technologies are made up components of older technologies or ideas, I am not saying that you cannot do something genuinely new. But I am also sure that if you talk to the guys who built pagerank they probably had some inspirations and stuff they took ideas from. It is all perspective.
I agree its the concepts that matter, it is just that whenever I hear this argument no one (who is making it) can actually point out exactly what those concepts are or even point to any reason why another event driven framework would be better (besides the obvious I already know the language gambit which applies to node equally, if not more). Many people cant even point out the obvious frameworks that do similar stuff, with maybe twisted being the exception.
I would be incredibly surprised if even a handful of dev shops have server side devs who only work in node. But I don't really see what that has to do with anything.
I get that this is mostly about the 'hype,' but if Node and the community are doing well, have good documentation and we are seeing the technology used to implement some cool stuff (trello for example) then how is the hype confusing? That is the thing that I don't get. Node is now a cross-platform environment that fits easily into PaaS and SaaS concepts, is gaining hosting options by the day (heroku, azure, etc) has a huge library of third party modules, and the majority of people using it seem to understand what it is and is not. It seems obvious to me that any new technology, or new implementation of a technology if that makes you feel better about the terminology, that has all those things going for will generate a certain amount of hype.
I don't know what books would be best to learn event driven programming. That would be a good question to have an answer to. My point in suggesting a book is that it's the concepts here that matter, not that you are using a Javascript, Python, Ruby, or C# implementation, or a language built around the idea like Erlang. Once you know the concepts, you can quickly and easily pick up or even build a framework in any language.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that Node and the community isn't doing well. It's just that many of us are quite confused by the massive hype around it. Javascript might be a fine choice in some situations, but in general, on the server side you have many different languages to choose from and many (most?) of them also have competent event driven frameworks available. It would surprise me if most development shops didn't have server side developers who work daily with a language other than Javascript.