The Node Way

Node.js has always been easy to grasp, but difficult to master. Design patterns and best practices exist for avoiding common pitfalls and building more stable applications, but these guiding principles have never been well documented. It has always been up to you, the individual developer, to uncover them on your own through painful trial and error.

Frustrated by this, I set out to discover the Node.js philosophy and what people really mean when they talk about "The Node Way." Is it just about small modules and asynchronous code, or could there be something more?

http://thenodeway.io is the result of that journey. It is a collection of articles and chapters on understanding the fundamentals of Node.js and leveraging that understanding to build great things.

Transcript

1. THE NODE WAY
2. “Once you get into the ‘Node Way’ of building lots of small, single-purpose modules, you want to start doing it all the time.” — NPM blog post http://blog.npmjs.org/post/ 100099402720/registry-roadmap
3. “Step, control-flow the node.js way.” — Step http://thechangelog.com/
4. “… The Node Way, handed down from the ancient times of Node 0.3.” — NPM FAQ https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/faq#- node_modules-is-the-name-of-my-deity-s-arch- rival-and-a-forbidden-word-in-my-religion-can-i- configure-npm-to-use-a-different-folder-
5. WHAT IS THE NODE WAY?
6. @FredKSchott Box, Inc.
7. Yahoo, Paypal, LinkedIn, etc Me ~ 2013
8. ~ 2014
10. STRUCTURE ASYNC COMMUNITY
11. STRUCTURE
12. Build small, single- purpose modules
13. Choose the best tool for the job
14. Complexity via Composition
15. ASYNC
16. Invest in clean async
17. (example) return early //  Bad!   function  isPercentage(val)  {   if  (val  >=  0)  {          if  (val  <  100)  {              return  true;          }  else  {              return  false;          }      }  else  {          return  false;      }   } — Example by Felix Geisendörfer //  Great!   function  isPercentage(val)  {      if  (val  <  0)  {          return  false;      }      if  (val  >  100)  {          return  false;      }      return  true;   }  
18. (example) get help with control flow async.series([          function  callFirst(){  ...  },          function  callSecond(){  ...  }   ]);     async.parallel([          function  callTogether(){  ...  },          function  callTogether(){  ...  }   ],  callback);  
19. COMMUNITY
20. Leverage the Ecosystem (OR: There’s a module for that)
21. If you’re thinking it, someone has already thought it, named it, built it, and maybe even written tests for it.
22. Write modules for others to use
23. Write modules for others to read
24. Embrace the community
25. @FredKSchott Box, Inc. Thank you.