Python vs JavaScript

I've been toying with the idea of playing around with node.js when I get some time. But I wonder, how well does it do for "normal" scripting stuff? I'm sure it's a nice tool for building socket servers, proxies and so on, but how suitable is it for stuff outside that niche? Stuff like parsing text, csv files, connecting to databases (ldap, sql, ...), access to POSIX functions, etc.?

In addition to the above, personally in python land I've used numpy/scipy/matplotlib extensively to do calculations and plotting stuff; AFAICT javascript/node/npm doesn't have anything coming close to those. But in the grand scheme of things that's perhaps a somewhat esoteric use case. Then again, servers capable of handling tens of thousands of concurrent connections seem pretty esoteric as well (to me, at least!)..