Design your way

Node.js is a technology that is increasing in popularity with web developers. Not too many people know what this new technology is. Node.js is a server-side JavaScript environment that uses an asynchronous event-driven model.

What all this translates to is rather simple, the environment is used for writing scalable network applications that have a high performance. Some have compared this to the Ruby Event Machine or Python’s Twisted, but this software goes even further. Node.js uses the event loop as a language instead as a library.

According to the textbook definition, Node.js is built using Chrome’s JavaScript runtime for an easy built network application. Node.js uses an event-driven and non-blocking I/O model. This device is lightweight and great for data-intensive real-time applications. This program can run through distributed devices.

That is not all that Node.js can do. There are thousands of different modules for many different purposes even though this project is young.

Why should you learn Node.js

With a complete understanding of Node.js you will be able to do amazing things online. You can use it to develop real-time, scalable web applications. You will also be able to adapt to emerging and new JavaScript frameworks like Derby.js or Meteor.js

Unlike the past times where you needed to know the server-side languages (including PHP, Rails, Java, and Perl) that were needed to develop web based applications, nowadays there is much more that can be done with JavaScript alone.

Tutorials, books and other learning resources

Node.js can help you do amazing things once you take the time to learn it. There are many resources and tutorials to help with this process.

Nodeschool

NodeSchool is an open source project run by volunteers with two goals: to create high quality programming curriculum and to host community learning events.

The defining characteristic of the workshopper is the interactvity and automation. Workshoppers are made up of challenges of increasing difficulty. Each challenge starts by explaining a concept, and then presents a list of requirements for solving the challenge. Learners then try and write a computer program that satisfies the criteria.

When they feel confident about their solution they submit it to the workshop for verification. The workshop runs their solution and checks if all requirements were satisfied. If any are wrong or missing the learner gets contextual feedback and they can try again. If their code passes all of the criteria then they pass the challenge and move on to the next challenge.

All of this happens in an automated way. Workshoppers can be thought of almost like a unit test suite that the learner must make pass by implementing the correct code.

Learn Node.js on Code School

Discover how the Node framework can help you write server-side code and build lightweight, scalable network applications.

Nodejitsu

They believe in sharing knowledge. So they have assembled this growing collection of node.js how-to articles. These articles range from basic to advanced. They provide relevant code samples and insights into the design and philosophy of node itself.

docs.nodejitsu.com is an open source project and is curated by the Nodejitsu team and friends.

The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Node.js

There’s no shortage of Node.js tutorials out there, but most of them cover specific use cases or topics that only apply when you’ve already got Node up and running. I see comments every once and awhile that sound something like, “I’ve downloaded Node, now what?” This tutorial answers that question and explains how to get started from the very beginning.

Asynchronous Code Design with Node.js

The asynchronous event-driven I/O of Node.js is currently evaluated by many enterprises as a high-performance alternative to the traditional synchronous I/O of multi-threaded enterprise application server. The asynchronous nature means that enterprise developers have to learn new programming patterns, and unlearn old ones.

The Art of Node

This document is intended for readers who know at least a little bit of a couple of things:

a scripting language like JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Perl, etc. If you aren’t a programmer yet then it is probably easier to start by reading JavaScript for Cats.
git and github. These are the open source collaboration tools that people in the node community use to share modules. You just need to know the basics.

Node.js Video Tutorials

Real Time Web with Node.js (pdf)

The Node Beginner Book

The aim of this document is to get you started with developing applications with Node.js, teaching you everything you need to know about “advanced” JavaScript along the way. It goes way beyond your typical “Hello World” tutorial.

This document will probably fit best for readers that have experience with at least one object-oriented language like Ruby, Python, PHP or Java, only little experience with JavaScript, and completely new to Node.js.

Mastering Node

Open source eBook for nodejs – written w/ markdown, outputs to various formats (pdf, mobi, epub, html, etc)

Learn Node.js Completely and with Confidence

This is the age of the JavaScript developer, and it will only get better, particularly because of the widespread adoption of HTML5; the abandonment of Flash; the ubiquity of mobile devices; the recent rise of Meteor.js; and the popularity, stability, and robustness of Node.js, which allows developers to use JavaScript on the server.

Node.js, a revolutionary technology, is the immediate and near future of modern web application development with JavaScript as the sole server-side language.

In this article, I provide you with a comprehensive road map for learning Node.js; this road map has worked for me and I am confident it will work for you. You will learn Node.js completely and you should approach this course with confidence because you are only 2 to 3 weeks away from building impressive modern web applications in short time.

The Dead-Simple Step-by-Step Guide for Front-End Developers to Getting Up and Running with Node.JS, Express, Jade, and MongoDB

Node.js for Beginners

Event-driven programming can be overwhelming for beginners, which can make Node.js difficult to get started with. But don’t let that discourage you; In this article, the author will teach you some of the basics of Node.js and explain why it has become so popular.

Chances are good that you are familiar with asynchronous programming; it is, after all, the “A” in Ajax. Every function in Node.js is asynchronous. Therefore, everything that would normally block the thread is instead executed in the background. This is the most important thing to remember about Node.js. For example, if you are reading a file on the file system, you have to specify a callback function that is executed when the read operation has completed.

Learning Server-Side JavaScript with Node.js

Node.js is all the buzz at the moment, and makes creating high performance, real-time web applications easy. It allows JavaScript to be used end to end, both on the server and on the client. This tutorial will walk you through the installation of Node and your first “Hello World” program, to building a scalable streaming Twitter server.

Creating a basic site with Node.js and Express

This walkthrough will go over setting up a basic site using Node.js and Express. The walkthrough is aimed at beginners exploring Node.js as I’ve had many questions from friends and colleagues about creating and deploying node apps. If you are not a beginner the article probably won’t be of much use to you.

NodeCasts

NodeCasts is geared toward the developer who is familiar with JavaScript as a language, possibly from the browser, who is new to Node.js. (Some JavaScript patterns, especially when they apply to asynchronous programming, may be explored.) As time progresses, the screencasts will begin to target the intermediate Node developer, building on knowledge gained in earlier episodes.

Although many (if not most) of these screencasts are just as applicable to Windows systems as others, they were written on and will generally target a UNIX-like environment (the screencasts are made on OS X). Some level of familiarity with a Bash-like shell is assumed, as is a basic understanding of concepts like the path, environment variables, and the current working directory.

Node.js Tutorial – Step-by-Step Guide For Getting Started

In this article we are going to take a look at the most important aspects of Node so you can get on track with it and start building applications right away.

Node.js Tutorials

This tutorial is designed for software programmers who want to learn the basics of Node.js and its architectural concepts. This tutorial will give you enough understanding on all the necessary components of Node.js with suitable examples.