me_me_mu_mu

Trying to compare options like Node, Ruby/Rails, and Django against something like Java/Spring, Elixir/Phoenix, or Go.

I'm wondering if anyone here is using Node for their production APIs. What is the scaling story like? What about the costs and maintenance involved?

I've got experience with Go and Java, but I've only ever used Node for scripts and super simple internal APIs. I don't have experience with Ruby/Rails nor Django, and used Elixir many years ago and enjoyed it but I'm not sure if I want to invest my time on it.

Interested to hear your thoughts. My biggest pros for Java/Go is that it is tried and tested. I've heard many people use Rails and that it is super fast to build stuff with it. The cons is that it is hard to find people who can use Java/Go well enough, and I've worked on too many projects with spaghetti code and horribly designed architecture. A dynamic language seems easier to refactor or just re-write, compared to these.

I’ve got an old (but still not bad for dev needs) quad code with 16gb ram. This is quite a lot for running various small containerized services. However I’m wondering if this is considered a bad practice.

Cloud machines for something like this would be >$100 a month.

What security measures and other considerations would I need to keep in mind if I go this route?

For example I have a Emailer service that sends updates to users (needs to connect to my remote hosted DB)

How would you build a trading system (similar to whatever stock or other exchanges you may use)? I'm really inspired by coinbase and robin hood, but how they heck are they built?

I am trying to learn more about this but my google searches are not turning up the right results. What is involved on the backend? What systems are in play and how do things work at a high level?