> It's when you use it to serve files (images, videos in particular) or larger data tables that it loses steam.
Pretty much every guide/tutorial/documentation says to not use node for this. Isn't this the same for a lot of languages like php, python, ruby, etc? Those all usually run behind a reverse proxy that handles file serving.
I think it's totally fair to compare node/js at least to Go. Go is quite simple: it's a GC language, almost without pitfalls except for nil and not error checking type conversions. It's really not unlike JavaScript in many aspects.
Also: node's performance is ok when passing small amounts of data per request. It's when you use it to serve files (images, videos in particular) or larger data tables that it loses steam. And it will take quite a bit of memory, though, unless you start optimizing.
Node is one of those environments that makes it easy to start a project, but difficult to bring it to fruition.