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The Node Beginner Book

nodebeginner.org

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Re: The Node Beginner Book

#11

Post by ascendant »

olegp wrote: post #9
WA wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> That being said, I agree with most of the issues you raise. Lack of backwards compatibility, rapid changes in APIs and need to build from source make building webapps in Node more complicated than it needs to be.

I think Node is on the precipice of being ready for primetime. There is quite obviously a groundswell of interest. I myself was screwing around with it last night trying to get Express, node and Mongoose to work and I couldn't figure it out with the docs I found (99% sure problem is on my end though).

Since there is rapidly growing demand for documentation and examples, the community will work to fill that. I would be surprised if we make it another 6 months without someone really picking up the reins and taking the lead for community documentation. Who knows, maybe someone already has and I just haven't picked up on it yet?

Re: The Node Beginner Book

#12

Post by city41 »

I'm still trying to understand how node actually works. I'm just about to start digging through its source code. It seems most people view node as a magical mystery that they don't understand why it works, just that it does. How is a single threaded app doing things in parallel? Is it like a game loop where it iterates through all its pending operations and gives each a slice of time to progress forward? Are deeper parts of node multi threaded? The callbacks being called serially makes perfect sense, its the parallelness of the actual operations that confuses me.

Re: The Node Beginner Book

#14

Post by ManuelKiessling »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #13

This was a well-written, easy-to-follow introduction, but I'd gladly pay money for an actual Node book that takes the reader from introduction to mastery.

Hi Ryan,

The Node Beginner Book is still work in progress, it's currently about 35% done.

So, there is more to come, but bringing people from introduction to mastery is a completely different story of course.

We will see how things develop :-)

Re: The Node Beginner Book

#15

Post by yardie »

This will be an invaluable guide in the future but I think it needs more work. Hello World has been covered everywhere so it's utility as an intro is pointless if you are already a programmer or are familiar with programming.

The guides I find most useful, in addition to references, are the ones that have you build an application from the ground up. So that you start to understand the pros and cons of the language you are trying to learn. I already know how to do Hello World, I already know how to create a node server, what I want is a bit more context, like building a simple messaging server, how to create and use simple frameworks, whats even more appreciated is tutorials and samples about the stuff already built-in.

This is one of the reason why I like working with Apple and Microsoft. They give you tons and tons of sample code that compiles and work. Want access to process information? Here's how. Want to use the camera? Here's how.

It would be great to have a simple CRUD node app that connects to MySQL. That usually gets me 75% of the way there.

Re: The Node Beginner Book

#16

Post by thenduks »

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #10

Hi 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 grea…

Hi there, thanks for this, I've been looking for something self-contained-ish to point friends to when asking about node.

One thing, the site is really messed up in browsers that aren't super wide. My browser is ~1100px wide and the size/positioning of the main content puts it off the right side of the window forcing me to scroll horizontally. I'm not sure why you have stuff like `margin-left: 160px;` in there. It would be a lot better to use `margin: 0 auto;` so people with small screens or unmaximized browsers wont be assaulted :)

Thanks again!

edit: To be clear, I'm suggesting:

    #book, #disqus_thread, #footer {
      /* your styles */
      margin: 0 auto;
      margin-top: 24px;
    }

Re: The Node Beginner Book

#17

Post by ManuelKiessling »

yardie wrote: post #15

This will be an invaluable guide in the future but I think it needs more work. Hello World has been covered everywhere so it's utility as an intro is pointless if you are already a programmer or are familiar with programming. The guides I find most useful, in addition to references, are the ones that have you build an application from the ground up. So that you start to understand the pros and cons of the language yo…

Hi yardie,

I agree, which is why I only very briefly bring up the Hello World stuff (it's a tradition after all :-)), and then state "Ok, this stuff is boring, right? Let's write some real stuff."

And the rest of the tutorial is about building something real and complete (albeit simple). Maybe I should extend the example app a bit, and talk about databases, too.

Oh, and please note, the "book" is only about 35% complete, so there is more to come!

Re: The Node Beginner Book

#18

Post by aaronblohowiak »

city41 wrote: post #12

I'm still trying to understand how node actually works. I'm just about to start digging through its source code. It seems most people view node as a magical mystery that they don't understand why it works, just that it does. How is a single threaded app doing things in parallel? Is it like a game loop where it iterates through all its pending operations and gives each a slice of time to progress forward? Are deeper p…

There are io threads just like there are for xhr in the browser -- but your app code is single threaded.

Re: The Node Beginner Book

#19

Post by beck5 »

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #10

Hi 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 grea…

More node resources the better at the moment. A simple CRUD application guide would be very helpful. The java Play! Framework site has a really nice basic blog tutorial which is perfect for understanding the entire process.

I plan on starting my first node app in 6 weeks so please hurry up ;)

Re: The Node Beginner Book

#20

Post by ManuelKiessling »

thenduks wrote: post #16
ManuelKiessling wrote: post #10

Hi 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 grea…

Hi there, thanks for this, I've been looking for something self-contained-ish to point friends to when asking about node. One thing, the site is really messed up in browsers that aren't super wide. My browser is ~1100px wide and the size/positioning of the main content puts it off the right side of the window forcing me to scroll horizontally. I'm not sure why you have stuff like `margin-left: 160px;` in there. It wo…

Hi thenduks,

thanks for this one! I changed the CSS as you suggested and updated the site, it's now scroll-bar free down to 1000px.

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