Node.js vs. shell object?

Hi,

I'm curious if people using NodeJS have made more extensive use of the
kind of terminal command emulation that is shown in the N4M Overview.

I've been using the shell object for many years to control some external Lisp processes — by creating temp files and triggering evaluation with terminal commands — which has proven very solid and fast even though not so elegant.

Only tricky part is that shell is an external and it is not so great to make a shareable package.
NodeJS is now fully integrated and works also on Windows, so I thought... why not?
Did anyone compare performance/latency in comparison with the shell object?

Also I'm not sure to understand the "emulation" part in the Overview, compared with the shell object.
How difficult would it be to add something like SBCL command and arguments, if already installed somewhere on the machine?

Thanks !

Julien