Lack of practical insights into using Play+Scala vs. JavaScript

We (my team) is starting on a cloud-hosted web based application. We embarked upon Scala+Play as the server side web application. Since no one knew Scala in my team (previous experience in Java/Java Script/Python/C++) all of us are experiencing a steep learning curve. After spending a few weeks on learning basics of Scala, we started with play-scala-starter example as a basis. It took a few days of time for a team member to create a prototype GET+POST API handler accessing mysql DB. Given significant efforts and the time spent on Scala, a team member for the sake of comparison built the same prototype functionality using node.js in just half-a-day (4-5 hours). That was a revelation for all of us. To add to that the Internet is replete with node.js success stories used in enterprise grade applications (note that for front-end anyway we are going to use JS based framework e.g. Angular, React, etc.). Now as a team we are debating on next approach - play+scala or node.js. We don't want to take a decision based on short-term gains or to avoid initial struggle in ramping-up. That's why posting this question here to get real-world insights. If this is a wrong-place to ask such questions then please suggest appropriate one. Most likely this question will be closed as it is of 'discussion' type. NOTE: This post is not to criticize any of the approaches. So apologies in advance.

via NKM