Hey, I'm currently evaluating a number of Node.js web frameworks for a project I'm working on (I'll eventually publish the results on my blog). So far, I have reviewed: RailwayJS, Locomotive[0], Tower.js[1], GeddyJS[2], Derby[3] and Meteor[4]. It would be really great if you could give me your opinion on how RailwayJS compares to those (especially Tower.js, GeddyJS and Locomotive as they seem to be competing directly).
Well, I'm not impartial, so I wouldn't talk about pros and cons of RailwayJS in comparison to Geddy and Tower. I think "the framework" concept is wrong now, everyone should think in modular manner, both framework users and creators, because it allows to build really decent software. Rock solid frameworks are full of lie, slow and monsterous. So, my goal in railway - keep it modular and thin. After 1.5 years Railway is not Rails-like :) It just follows best part of it's ideology. But every new stuff I'm planning to add to framework will be added as modules.
For example now I'm working on "RIO" (railwayjs + socket.io) module, which will unobtrousively add socket.io capabilities to framework. It also solves auth and user-to-user communication problems.
Another big way to go - client side. We have some information about application structure that could be used in client-side, and duplication through backbone on client-side is awful idea, why not just give and transarent API for it. And this is separate module too, not bundled in railway.
So, this is a biggest difference in my opinion, anything other we implementing are basically the same.
> I think "the framework" concept is wrong now, everyone should think in modular manner
Definitely agree and that's why I am still undecided whether I want to use vanilla Express or a high level framework. RailwayJS is my top choice right now as it is built on top of Express and seems pretty modular. Tower also seems good but I dislike the fact that it is written in CoffeeScript.
FWIW, we couldn't get Socket.IO work out of the box. The transports didn't work/switch well and finally we gave up other transports and used "websockets" alone. Few people seems to have better results with SockJS than Socket.IO when we checked the community.
