>> It's more just an annoyance of the language. Specifically, anonymous functions are must easier in JavaScript, so it was just easier to write read and write maintainable code.
That's pretty specious. You can easily write a function defined inside a function that you can pass by just naming it. "Anonymous" functions are just syntactic sugar. Furthermore, writing a new python named function is easier (fewer chars) to write than a javascript anonymous function, so the "sugar" gained is moot.
Finally, as you build more and bigger systems, you realize that those multi-line anonymous functions you had you actually want to be named (for documentation) and tested. So you'll end up de-anonymizing the complex (multi-line) ones anyway.
As for speed, why not compare a jit (v8) to a jit (pypy) ?
This is getting ridiculous. These guys were busy launching a product, not trying to write a balanced comparison of the pros and cons of every evented framework out there.
I don't see how it's specious to prefer javascript syntax over python syntax for asynchronous code. It's an aesthetic consideration and so it's less about the fact that you can have the same sorts of functionality and structures in both environments and more about which style people prefer.
I really don't understand why whenever somebody switches to node from python people pounce on them like this, as if people aren't allowed to find a particular syntax annoying?
That's pretty specious. You can easily write a function defined inside a function that you can pass by just naming it. "Anonymous" functions are just syntactic sugar. Furthermore, writing a new python named function is easier (fewer chars) to write than a javascript anonymous function, so the "sugar" gained is moot.
Finally, as you build more and bigger systems, you realize that those multi-line anonymous functions you had you actually want to be named (for documentation) and tested. So you'll end up de-anonymizing the complex (multi-line) ones anyway.
As for speed, why not compare a jit (v8) to a jit (pypy) ?