>You're comparing a runtime environment to a framework
Yup. Because there is no Rails-like framework in NodeJS.
>Use Angular on the client and something server side
That "something server side" is the entire problem. In 2006 if you're writing a web app, the answer was Ruby on Rails. In 2019 the answer is "Angular or React or Vue on the front end and something server side". No generators, no scaffolds, no auto-generated migrations, no opinions, no ORM, no standardized way of doing anything, no naming scheme, no guidance. Just "something server side".
If I said "use Ruby to create a web app" you'd load up Rails. If I said "use Python" you'd load up Django. If I said "use NodeJS", you'd just... list all your NPM packages?
Yeah, you're right. I don't know why that is.
You can properly engineer stuff in Node but there are no "rails" to guide you so I get that more projects will be a mess as compared to Rails or Django.
To be honest I wouldn't suggest Node as a solution for your backend which is probably why I said "something server side" because when I think Node I just think of a thin API wrapper that uses an RPC to call your Java services or what-have-you. The only reason you even do that is to give the FE people something to mesh data together from services for their clients while you can keep backend APIs generic. Luckily graphql will start to replace that convention.
Makes me want to build such a framework in TS... but why would I do that when I can just use Spring. :)
Yup. Because there is no Rails-like framework in NodeJS.
>Use Angular on the client and something server side
That "something server side" is the entire problem. In 2006 if you're writing a web app, the answer was Ruby on Rails. In 2019 the answer is "Angular or React or Vue on the front end and something server side". No generators, no scaffolds, no auto-generated migrations, no opinions, no ORM, no standardized way of doing anything, no naming scheme, no guidance. Just "something server side".
If I said "use Ruby to create a web app" you'd load up Rails. If I said "use Python" you'd load up Django. If I said "use NodeJS", you'd just... list all your NPM packages?