And it's generally nowhere near 54 hours... more like 42. We nominally started at 6pm on Friday night, but teams weren't formed until 9-10pm. Pitches were demoed Sunday afternoon, and 48 hours from the start on Friday - Sunday at 6pm, it was all over. I've no clue why they SW fixates on the "54 hours" number. 42 would be far closer to the truth, but perhaps more intimidating for people?

Plus if they already knew rails. I use node mostly now and wonder why people would use anything else. However if i had alot of expertise in rails i would probably use it for most everything as well until i was comfortable enough with node.