Vert.x is a polygot implementation of the node paradigm on the JVM. You can spawn ‘verticles’ to handle a single API endpoint which all communicate through a messaging backend that extends to the clients Think node + messageMQ perhaps. They do have some good abstractions to reduce callback hell.
I played with it for awhile but in the end it was a lonely affair, with very little activity on their Google group.
It should not be the GC. GC in Erlang is per-process, so there is no stop the world event.
