Learning Node – Using Node.js In My Final Year At College – What's This Course Then?

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Learning Node – Using Node.js In My Final Year At College – What's This Course Then?

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learning-node-slides

Slides from my talk at the NodeJS Dublin meet-up (May 2013)

On Github dmcaodha / learning-node-slides

Learning Node

Using Node.js In My Final Year At College

Daniel McKay / @dmpmck

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Hello Everyone

Daniel McKay

What's This Course Then?

IADT - Dún Laoghaire

BSc Hons - Computing

(Multimedia Systems / Web Engineering)

What We Studied

  • Java - OOP, Data Structures, Algorithms
  • Web Development - HTML, CSS, PHP
  • Hardware & Operating Systems
  • Software Engineering
  • Networks - Protocols, Socket Programming
  • Databases - Relational
  • Maths - Computer Modelling, Stats
  • ...Loads of other stuff

Survey Project

  • Web Application - PHP
  • Native Android Application - Java
  • Data Exchange - XML
  • Database - MySQL

If I had to do it all again...

What Would I Do Differently?

Make Some Changes...

Strip out the native Android App Make a mobile Web app Use more JavaScript Use JSON for data exchange

Research

What They Said...

  • Their app is mainly I/O bound
  • Node's evented, non-blocking model suits this use case
  • A single process handles many connections
  • Node is good at talking to external services over HTTP
  • Client developers can work on server-side code

I Was Intrigued...

I wanted to take a look at the technology for my final project

but I hadn't programmed with JavaScript...

...luckily, we had an upcoming JavaScript programming module in college.

Project Meeting - Initial Conversation

Me: I want to write a Node app.

Supervisor: Why?

Me: 'Cos it sounds cool.

Supervisor: You'll have to do better than that.

Between Us We Came Up With A Project

Developing in the Cloud with Node.js

A study in Node development using cloud services

Research

  • Web hosting versus the cloud
  • Web server programs
  • Node - under the hood
  • How to write a Node app

Where to now?

Node Dublin 2012 Came Along

A chance to hear about all the great things people were doing with Node.js from across the world:

  • Real-time systems
  • Streams
  • How to write big apps
  • A cloud-based OS written in Node
  • Genetic algorithms in the browser
  • The open source movement
  • F***ing robots - Johnny-Five is alive!

There was even a fellow talking about Lego in a wizard's hat made out of a Doritos bag :)

Arduino

43 lines of code - johnny-five and socket.io

Back To The Project

Need to start doing some real work!

Building A Node App - Resources

Online: Books:

Dischost

  • Cloud-based music database service
  • Allows users to store and play digital music from the browser

Application Architecture

  • Express Web Framework - RESTful, session support
  • Socket.io - Real-time features
  • CouchDB - JSON document store

A Small Demo

I hope it works...

What I learned

  • A whole lot about writing JavaScript
  • A whole lot more about general app development
  • There's a great community surrounding this technology

Go to meet-ups, speak to them and build something

THE END

Thanks For Listening.