We're not a production hosting platform--at least not at the moment. We do spin up a preview server for you to play around with your app while you build it in Treeline, but it's not meant to compete with Heroku or any such provider. Instead, we give you a way to download your project as a fully-formed SailsJS app which you can deploy anywhere that supports Node. You can also use the same tool to preview your app on your local computer while still keeping it synched up with Treeline in real time--hooray for sockets!
It's true that when this has been tried in the past, there's always been a point where the "magic" ends--where there's some functionality that you need which isn't included. Treeline is different because you can always create new components when you need them. The Machine specification (http://node-machine.org) is open-source, and you can upload new machinepacks to NPM (Treeline imports them automatically), or create them from right within the app. So the magic never has to end :)
Or as PG put it, "You get to make your own blocks!"
Deployment is the worst, for everybody. We're definitely excited about the possibilities there--done right, you could wire up your app in Treeline and set it live without your feet ever touching the ground (or muck, as it were.)
We're essentially in agreement--backend development should be the easy part, but it often ends up being needlessly complicated and broken. So many backend systems are made up of the same basic components, but they end up being rewritten all the time because they don't work well together or are poorly documented. Treeline aims to make that 80% of your app that's always the same and basically automate it for you, leaving you to focus on the creative part (the special sauce that makes your app great).
Treeline compiles your apps to Node.js apps using the SailsJS framework. Your code is available to you at any time via a command-line tool--we offer the hosted version as an added bonus.
I agree that the messaging displayed for on-hold questions can seem like you're being ganged-up on. In reality, the way that questions get put on-hold (and eventually closed) is this: there's a review queue that users with enough reputation can go to, where they will be presented with a question that has been flagged as being "off-topic" (or having some other problem). The reviewer can either agree, disagree or skip the question. There's no discussion with other moderators around the matter, and you don't even know who the other reviewers are until you cast your vote. So the "put on-hold by John Doe, Jane Doe, etc." message that ends up on your question is not intended as a rebuke; instead it's meant to force the reviewers to act responsibly, since they won't have the shield of anonymity. This is in addition to many other checks that StackOverflow puts in place to try and prevent reviewer abuse. Point being, try not to take it personally when your question is put on hold or closed; nobody's trying to tell you off (they would do that in the comments if anywhere).