What is node.js and is your book a good one for a novice

[robyne vaughn]

Hello,
I tried to look at the sample chapters, but the links push you to an opening page, and on a quick glance, I didn't see any sample chapters to download.
I am new to mobile and web app development. I'm still trying to determine the best tools to use and best practices. There are so many options. For the moment, my team has started with Eclipse. We're using some jquery mobile and trying to figure out phone gap. We have developed a couple of Android apps which use a restful web service and pull json data from our DB2/LUW database. We expect to build an Apache Tomcat web server after we reach a certain point. For now, we're serving from Eclipse/tomcat.

In our googling around about how to do what, we cross trails that point to Node.js, but since we have started down a path, we hate to add still one more thing to learn, especially since we're still in the "feeling our way through" stage.

Can you tell me what is Node.Js's primary purpose, what need it fills and why we should consider using it?

Then, is your book good for the novice?

Thanks,

[Mike Cantelon]

robyne vaughn wrote:Hello,
I tried to look at the sample chapters, but the links push you to an opening page, and on a quick glance, I didn't see any sample chapters to download.
I am new to mobile and web app development. I'm still trying to determine the best tools to use and best practices. There are so many options. For the moment, my team has started with Eclipse. We're using some jquery mobile and trying to figure out phone gap. We have developed a couple of Android apps which use a restful web service and pull json data from our DB2/LUW database. We expect to build an Apache Tomcat web server after we reach a certain point. For now, we're serving from Eclipse/tomcat.

In our googling around about how to do what, we cross trails that point to Node.js, but since we have started down a path, we hate to add still one more thing to learn, especially since we're still in the "feeling our way through" stage.

Can you tell me what is Node.Js's primary purpose, what need it fills and why we should consider using it?

Then, is your book good for the novice?

Thanks,

Hi Robyne,

There are two sample chapters available: chapter 4 (http://www.manning-source.com/books/cantelon/Node.jsSample04.pdf) and chapter 8 (http://www.manning-source.com/books/cantelon/Node.jsSample08.pdf). Let me know if you have any trouble downloading them.

Someone who's new to web application development might find our book frustrating. I'd say our book is a good fit for anyone with a good working knowledge of JavaScript ("Secret of the JavaScript Ninja" is a great book on this topic) and experience developing web applications (in any language).

As for Node's primary purpose, Node was designed to handle DIRTy (data-intensive, real-time) applications: so applications that need to move data round quickly like web applications, online games, chat applications, voice-over-ip, etc. Node is good at handling a lot of simultaneous connections in a way that minimizes memory and CPU use. If you're building something where that's the challenge, then it could make sense to consider Node.

Cheers,
Mike