(I work at Deployd) Yes, that's pretty much right - an experienced back-end developer with a lot of time on their hands won't have much need for Deployd, but a front-end developer - or at least a developer who prefers to spend their time in the front-end - would definitely benefit from using it.
It's actually very different from Meteor. Meteor is a realtime library for unifying front-end and back-end logic, and Deployd is an API engine for scripting back-end logic.
In fact, with some hacking, you could probably get the two to work together; it's something that I want to try sometime down the road.
(I work at Deployd) From our perspective, one of our ultimate goals is to create a platform where the tech stack doesn't matter to the user. We've partially solved this with the Mac/Windows installer - it installs Node.js and MongoDB dependencies itself. That way, you don't need to know the stack unless you're developing extensions (which are node modules).
However, I do agree that we need to document the stack better for those that want to install from source, or host it themselves.
(I work at Deployd) Our goal is first and foremost to generate useful APIs that you can use in your front-end, not necessarily to strictly adhere to the REST pattern. We do tend to use REST terminology when describing Deployd, and maybe that's a mistake that's causing more distraction than necessary.
If you're on Mac or Windows, it's easiest to use the installer. Otherwise (or if you just want to do it yourself), the "install from source" instructions are enough; you'll need both node.js and MongoDB in your PATH.
That's actually possible, 400 is just the default code:
cancel("You're not allowed to do that", 403);
I'm not sure why we didn't show that in the video.
Edit: Unless you're saying that 403 should be the default code?
It's actually very different from Meteor. Meteor is a realtime library for unifying front-end and back-end logic, and Deployd is an API engine for scripting back-end logic.
In fact, with some hacking, you could probably get the two to work together; it's something that I want to try sometime down the road.