I went and wrote the python simplehttpserver myself, just for kicks...
edit: here's the github
This is how you make a simple python server. It'll server index.html if you request the root, or whatever html file you request.
I was interested to see how hard it was to write a static file server in pure node js, meaning without express.js. Turns out it's quite easy, but the real point of this was to familiarize myself further with using node and reading the node documentation.