The Node Sessions: The Best of OSCON 2011; O’Reilly Media
Various Node.js gurus explain and explore the power of this server-side framework in this collection of videos. Two years later, the videos age pretty well, considering they cover Node.js 0.4.x and 0.5.x, and today’s current version is 0.10.x. The speakers range from Node committers to heavy Node users, and you gain insight into not only how Node works but why it works that way. Some highlights:
- Real Projects Built in Node and Developing Cloud9 in Cloud9 speak to the what works and what doesn’t in real-world use. Advice includes to use libraries like Puppet for configuration and Log Magic for logging. Cloud9 continues to grow and is an excellent way to get started with Node.
- Using jQuery with node.js introduces jsdom and how you can use this powerful framework on the server side. It implements the DOM as if it were a browser so jQuery selectors et al work fine.
- Running Node.js in Production and Node at Scale tells you how to make sure your Node app scales in real-world use. It covers how to choose meaningful benchmarks, how to structure your code, how to deploy, and how to keep your dependencies stable using package.json
- Programming a Chat Server does some live coding to show what you can do with sockets.io and Node. You can see the result at https://github.com/guille/oscon-chat.
- Why We Chose Node compares the dynamic nature of JavaScript with static languages like Java and C++, and explains the importance of being able to see exactly what’s going on when errors arise.
- Network Programming with Node.js talks about the challenges of porting Node to Windows.
I wish the speakers had repeated the questions before answering them–you’re left guessing what question the answer matches. Talks mostly finished ahead of schedule, reflecting perhaps speakers new to speaking. The information is prime (albeit dated), though, and the whole offers a good introduction to the world of Node.js.
Find the videos here: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920022183.do