I hope this series has helped you as much as it has helped me. Aside from the disappointing AngularJS tutorial, I feel I’ve learned great deal about Node.js and its place in the MEAN stack. As this is my final post for MPA, I think it a good idea to recap what I’ve learned, the mistaken assumptions I was forced to un-think, and the steps I took to do it. Part 0 — LAMP & MEAN In regards to web development, I […]
We’ve crossed the bridge from knowing nothing to understanding the basics of Node.js, Express, and MongoDB. Now, we are approaching the last piece of the MEAN stack puzzle: AngularJS. The Angular web site provides a helpful tutorial putting together a small, interactive catalogue app. I attempted to follow through it, hoping to avoid anything like a programming equivalent of the boat-on-the-truck fiasco to the right. That didn’t happen. I never even made it to Step 0 of their tutorial as the setup for […]
I’d like to take a moment and point out a few resources that have sprung up in the last few years. The “Open Courseware” movement is developing by leaps and bounds. Kahn Academy, Code Academy, Code School, and MIT Open Courseware are only a few of the educational services free to the public (though, MIT and Code School do charge for some of their higher level content). While I maintain a rigorous distrust against most manifestations of societal optimism, I have […]
It’s nearly impossible to find an image on the theme of “event horizon” on Google that isn’t somehow related to the incredibly scary 90’s movie. I wanted such a pic to represent the unattainable goal of knowing everything there is to know about programming. The more I learn, the more I learn how much more there is to learn. Kind of like life in general, I suppose. Philosophical opining aside, we do have a tidy little goal before us now. Up […]
In high school, I remember sewing together a pair of shorts, and then making a pillow. This was, of course, in Home Ec. In “computer” class, I learned that left-click selects things, right-click usually opens up options, the standard keyboard arrangement is called QWERTY, and power point can be used to tell humorous epics frowned upon by the school board. I’m just old enough to remember the Internet’s big arrival in grade school. ($500 for an Encarta subscription, anyone? And half an […]
The further I dig into this, the more tutorials I find. Some have more information than others, and others are better organized, but they all seem to solve different pieces of my particular puzzle. One that seems to come particularly close to our MEAN stack endeavor is the helpfully titled guide from Christopher Buecheler. He doesn’t mention AngularJS and uses Jade instead, which actually seems to be a “natural” component included with Express, but we can figure out the difference later. If […]
As I’ve said before, I’m still a novice in the programming arena. In our quest to understand Node.js and the tools surrounding it, we’ve come to the “EA” in the MEAN stack. Express and AngularJS seemed, insofar as I could tell from a mere surface-level investigation, really simple to use and impossible to explain. Everywhere I looked, tutorials told me how to install Express and use it to set up simple static servers, but there was little if any explanation of […]
Life is like a MEAN stack… of pancakes. That really makes no sense at all, but I have successfully made myself hungry for pancakes. In the meantime (no pun intended), I should try to get a firmer grasp of our new friend, the MEAN stack. I know we already covered downloading and installing Node, but I kept finding myself wrestling with the terminology as I tried to proceed with something more useful than Hello World. I’m taking a half step backward […]
I’ve spent quite a few hours trying to figure out exactly which step to take. It was easy to find a half dozen different methods of downloading and installing Node.js and its brother or sister components. Figuring out which is the “best” one is not so easy. I didn’t end up finding one website that helped solve each problem I ran into, so I’ll retrace my steps. NOTE—I am using an Ubuntu 12.04 Virtual Machine (VM). If you are using […]
My name is Nate, and I’m a Node.js newb. I’ve been asked to dive into Node.js and it’s surrounding environment of technologies, and to give an ant’s eye view of the learning process. I’ve heard the rumors, and witnessed a demonstration or two. This is the Next Big Thing in web development. While I hack away at the task before me, I will invariably make mistakes, run off into tangential topics, and generally make a mess. I’ll do my best […]