Simple server side functionality for web programming and newbies

The pragmatic choice for selecting language to learn programming in is javascript. It is not a Good language to learn programming in but it is easy to get stuff graphical, interactive and published. (Perhaps actionscript is better.)

After very little hacking in javascript a backend is needed for persisting data between sessions. Also other functionality is needed like user handling. So why not create a very simple server side app that does this? It can’t be used for serious applications but for simple html/javascript for youngsters wanting to learn it should do alright.