The Node Beginner Book
nodebeginner.org
The Node Beginner Book
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Re: The Node Beginner Book
#2Good things:
- Tells me what I'll make with the tutorial right up front.
- Lets me know exactly what prerequisite knowledge is (I can tick all those boxes, good).
- Aimed at folks who know traditional backend languages and some JS but aren't JS Gods (a lot of node tutes seem to assume complete JS mastery).
No bad things so far!
Thanks Mr Dumas.
Re: The Node Beginner Book
#3Though I learn only a little JavaScript, I will try it while I have a block time.
Now, just save it to my personal archive.
Re: The Node Beginner Book
#4I suggest using syntax highlighting in code examples.
Re: The Node Beginner Book
#5A little confusing that the title refers to "Node" rather than "node.js".
Re: The Node Beginner Book
#6A little confusing that the title refers to "Node" rather than "node.js".
Node is actually the real name. It is often referred to as node.js just to distinguish it from other concepts and stuff named "Node". If you go on nodejs.org, you'll see that they always refer to it as just "Node" in the About section.
Re: The Node Beginner Book
#7Good things: - Tells me what I'll make with the tutorial right up front. - Lets me know exactly what prerequisite knowledge is (I can tick all those boxes, good). - Aimed at folks who know traditional backend languages and some JS but aren't JS Gods (a lot of node tutes seem to assume complete JS mastery). No bad things so far! Thanks Mr Dumas.
Bad things:
Shows the very same tutorials over and over and over again. Last week, I tried to get my hands on NodeJS in a reasonable short time. That means, I wanted to write a basic web app with some AJAX in NodeJS having 1 or 2 days to actual learn it and another 3 days to implement the app. As much as I would love to see NodeJS to become more widespread, it's not gonna happen with these sparse amount of information around. It is simply not possible to learn NodeJS from tutorials at the moment, because almost all tutorials deal with a) getting a webserver up and running in 20 lines of code or less or b) uploading a file.
Seriously, either I want to deal with Node.JS to build network apps (then why all the tutorials about building web apps) or I want to use a framework to get my web app up and running in no time. But I really have no interest in writing a webserver and dealing with the routing on my own.
There is Express, but tutorials are outdated or don't cover it in depth. Furthermore, Node.JS is very cumbersome to install, as you need to compile it, compile a packet manager and a thousand other things before it is ready to go (if you want to use it for web development).
As long as people keep repeating the same tutorials over and over again, I don't see Node.JS becoming a popular tool for building web apps in the near future (which is sad, because I do kind of like Node). What I would like to see, is either a tutorial that focuses on building a framework from scratch or one that focuses on the use of an existing framework.
Re: The Node Beginner Book
#8Good things: - Tells me what I'll make with the tutorial right up front. - Lets me know exactly what prerequisite knowledge is (I can tick all those boxes, good). - Aimed at folks who know traditional backend languages and some JS but aren't JS Gods (a lot of node tutes seem to assume complete JS mastery). No bad things so far! Thanks Mr Dumas.
While I appreciate the thanks, I am only the messenger!
Re: The Node Beginner Book
#9Good things: - Tells me what I'll make with the tutorial right up front. - Lets me know exactly what prerequisite knowledge is (I can tick all those boxes, good). - Aimed at folks who know traditional backend languages and some JS but aren't JS Gods (a lot of node tutes seem to assume complete JS mastery). No bad things so far! Thanks Mr Dumas.
Bad things: Shows the very same tutorials over and over and over again. Last week, I tried to get my hands on NodeJS in a reasonable short time. That means, I wanted to write a basic web app with some AJAX in NodeJS having 1 or 2 days to actual learn it and another 3 days to implement the app. As much as I would love to see NodeJS to become more widespread, it's not gonna happen with these sparse amount of informatio…
The DailyJS tutorials are a great starting point for this: http://dailyjs.com/2010/11/01/node-tutorial/
That being said, I agree with most of the issues you raise. Lack of backwards compatibility, rapid changes in APIs and the need to build from source make building webapps in Node more complicated than it needs to be.
We're trying to address this at Akshell (http://www.akshell.com) by making it as easy as possible to get started, providing consistent documentation & core libraries and favoring synchronous I/O.
It would be great if you had time to check it out and give us some feedback: http://www.akshell.com/docs/0.3/intro/
Re: The Node Beginner Book
#10Hi all,
I'm the author of The Node Beginner Book. Thanks for discussing it here.
Your input is a great help. I see the points WA makes regarding the bad things.
It's true that it's yet another Node tutorial chewing around on the web server / web app stuff; but I think for the people I'm addressing it's still the most useful scenario because it allows to understand how a full fledged app is put together, and is a great example to explain all of the fundamental concepts, new JavaScript ones and conventional ones (because it might makes sense to understand what stuff is done differently and what is done in a known fashion).
So nothing really new here - I hope where this tutorial differs is that it (arguably) might be the first "one-stop" tutorial for Node to get beginners started. Not more not less.
Every other resource I could find forced me to google around to fill the gaps - while this is not a bad thing per se, I think sometimes it's nice to have something that really guides you from A to Z.
Like, for example, http://ruby.railstutorial.org/. If I manage to create something that's only 10% as cool, I'm going to be very happy :-)