I put it down completely when I signed on to help Tereza at HonestlyNow. HN is built on  Symfony, which is a PHP MVC framework. When I got there it was a website; when I left it was a platform of APIs that any developer could build around without the Symfony dependency. 

I like taking that approach–core set of APIs that support a variety of clients: mobile, widgets, plugins, bookmarklets, and the site itself. Separating the presentation layer from the core business logic makes code maintenance a lot easier, too. 

So with the search project, I’m returning to that API-based approach and separating the front end from the back end entirely, simply returning data or system messages. 

Node has advanced a bit. I’m thinking about hammering out something like Twitter, but for developers; it seems the Node’s the perfect back end for something like that. We’ll see.