Expressjs Node Learnings

I overheard a conversation once. That if one really wanted to learn how to use front end or backend frameworks, they shouldn’t shoot for using the “everything and a sink” full fledged frameworks, but rather the barebones ones.

To learn ruby, yah, use Rails. But to put in the views, controllers, models, and a db, and have it fast–use Sinatra. To learn CSS, don’t use Bootstrap, use another mobile responsesive framework. Rails prides itself on convention over configuration. Oddly enough, I saw somewhere in the express or node docs, them boasting the exact opposite. Configuration over convention. Learn the nuts and bolts, not just patterns to learn and recognize and take advantage of. Learn how things work, and piece by piece put them together, over and over again. Repeatedly.*

That being said, I’ve been reading about Expressjs and Node for the past several days. Going through tutorials and pdfs I bought. Hum…interesting stuff. Learned and gleaned somethings here and there. Followed some of them tutorials too.

Nothing beats though, after all is said and done, and theres only so much reading and following of tutorials one can do, plunking oneself down and coding a small project.

Have had an idea for a while, real simple app. Some api calls, focusing on the presentation layer. But want to do it with Expressjs. Before hopping on and trying stuff like Sails or Meteor, gotta learn the rudimentary stuff – actually Express is one of the more/most popular node frameworks, barebones as it is.

That being said, want to start implementing module and npm libraries in it. Pick up and implement a javascript MVC in it.

And you know what? After hacking away at the app for a couple hours this evening, got a very basic first version of something! Need to improve the views a lot, and it would be good to learn caching. But small steps, its the small steps in sum that make the large leaps. Keep putting them feet, one in front of another. Step by step.

Woot woot! Gotta polish and refine away at it. But yeah, fun stuffs.

JL

P.s. There seem to be some advantages to this approach. One learn stuff from the ground up, and if done with a lot of repetition, one really learns the system. Convention over configuration is great for scaffolding and getting an app off the ground real quick, but there’s more “magic”. The node way seems to require more learning, and in the long term pays off bigger dividends.