Hell, last I checked PHP is still king of the server-side Web scripting languages, as far as real-world speed. Like, fast enough that you've gotta be pretty careful in Java or Go or whatever, or you'll end up slower than PHP.
The way you make a scripting language fast is by getting the hell out of it and into C or C++ as fast as possible, and PHP's library ecosystem embraces that harder than just about any other scripting language, is the reason (I think).
[EDIT] My point is mainly that Node's performance isn't really that impressive, in the field of "languages one might use to write server-side Web code". It beats absolute slugs like Python and Ruby handily, but past that... eh. And really, in its speed category you'd probably do just as well using either of those and paying a little more attention to things like network calls and database access patterns.
Google has poured millions of $ and 100s of developers into the development of V8 to get every last inch of speed and optimisation. As far as comparing it to AOT/non-GC languages of course it will always be slower, but I would struggle to believe it's slower than PHP other than in specific situations.
The way you make a scripting language fast is by getting the hell out of it and into C or C++ as fast as possible, and PHP's library ecosystem embraces that harder than just about any other scripting language, is the reason (I think).
[EDIT] My point is mainly that Node's performance isn't really that impressive, in the field of "languages one might use to write server-side Web code". It beats absolute slugs like Python and Ruby handily, but past that... eh. And really, in its speed category you'd probably do just as well using either of those and paying a little more attention to things like network calls and database access patterns.