Any plans for a RESTful JSON API?
Suggestions
I currently use Atom (from github) for everything, my debugging is the server console and/or Chrome's console. I hear you about the js templates... I actually prefer to use angular/backbone with good ol' HTML5 layouts and templates (although I do love stylus and jade templating).
I really enjoyed Node/ExpressJS for the lessons on MVC, routing, etc..
Not sure if you've looked at Meteor but it's a sweet Node framework that has the real-time updating built in (a la Angular), it's a complete package and deployment is like, 1 line..
Being a 90% front-end guy though I don't really have the time to devote to really building anything significant from scratch (especially with the learning curve). I think I can accomplish the same by customizing and making custom front-ends for existing software, this is why I love you guys, lol. I'm able to understand and hack together stuff on the backend, just not really my forte.
I mainly avoid node for the hosting costs/setup nightmares so keeping things PHP/HTML is usually how I end up.