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There is Express, but tutorials are outdated or don't cover it in depth.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.
That's useful to see how something is done, but not why or the different options available. For that, there's still a definite lack of a clear guide. The guide on the Express website reads more like an API reference and doesn't go into detail on how to use the different features, which I think would be very helpful.
Right now I'm working on my first application using Express. Over the Summer, when I have free time, I'd like to write a tutorial series for Express and put it up on github so it can be updated as Express evolves. That's really one of the main issues right now, all this stuff is changing so rapidly that a tutorial can become outdated in a few months.
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.
> 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?
And I think there is a deb package as well.
But, I think I remember someone on the core team recommending to just build from source for now. I have not been doing that and it has been fine though.
- 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.