Level: Introductory

Ted Neward

Director, Developer Relations

Smartsheet.com

The circle, as they say, is now complete. JavaScript, once a maligned language due to its seeming relationship with Java yet baffling idiosyncrasies making it impossible to program, has now become an "elegant" language whose "misunderstood" behavior within the browser was all just... er… a misunderstanding. Now developers are building elegant programs running on elegant servers, using this elegant thing called Node.js, running JavaScript on the server. Because, you know, it's not (*cough* ASP) like anybody (*cough* LiveScript) ever did that before…. In this session, you'll learn some of the "elegance" this platform brings, as well as some of the not-so-elegant parts, including a recap of the language (because nobody wants to admit that they really didn't ever learn JavaScript), the packaging system used in Node apps (npm), and some of the popular server-side libraries that Node uses (which change on a weekly basis). If you've never used Node, but wondered why everybody was so excited about JavaScript on the server, come on by and have a few myths dispelled.