Month: August 2016

Node.js Interactive Europe is the place to be this September, an exciting event for all Node lovers.  It will have various workshops, tech talks and community discussions that will tell us all about the future development of Node.js and JavaScript.

Node.js Interactive will take place between September 15-18th in Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

You can register here.

Node.js is rapidly rising through the ranks, emerging as a universal platform. The Node,js Interactive Europe event brings together developers, community contributors, creating a perfect opportunity for discussion, to provide insights about the development of Node.js and what the future may hold.

“We’ve hand-selected a range of presenters and content that will showcase the future of Node.js and how pervasive it has become in the market through both a community and enterprise lens”

Mikeal Rogers, community manager of Node.js Foundation

This is the conference to be for every noder, but not just that, as the talks will focus on node.js and corresponding technologies.

The keynote includes:

• Ashley Williams, Node.js Foundation community board chair, founder of NodeTogether, and developer community and content manager at npm

• Doug Wilson, Express lead maintainer

• James Snell, IBM engineer and Node.js Foundation TSC member

• Kat Marchán, CLI engineer at npm

• Mikeal Rogers, community manager at the Node.js Foundation

The Node.js Interactive Europe event will debate the new definition of the full stack, as they put it themselves –  “The new full stack is a combination of everything from the browser to a toaster.” The event brings together companies and open source projects to discuss this concept in the following fields:

• Cloud and Back End

• Data and Artificial Intelligence

• Debugging, Tracing & Tooling

• IoT (Including Node.js being embedded into IoT devices)

• Node.js Core

• Security and Performance

This edition of Node.js Interactive will also feature workshops, diversity scholarships, longer session and childcare (per community demands).

Here’s a quick sample on what can you look forward to:

Cloud and Back End

• Node.js and Containers go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly from Ross Kukulinski of NodeSource

• Building the Node.js Global Distribution Network from Guillermo Rauch creator of Socket.io

• SWIMming in the microservices Ocean from Luca Maraschi of Sporti and nearForm

Diagnosing, Debugging, and DevOps

• Instrumentation and Tracing in Node.js from Thomas Watson of Opbeat

• The Cost of Logging from Matteo Collina of nearForm

Machine Learning, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence

• Taking on Genetically Evolving Cellular Automata with JavaScript from Irina Shestak of Small Media Foundation

• From Pterodactyls and Cactus to Artificial Intelligence from Ivan Seidel of Tenda Digital

Node.js Core

• Keeping the Node.js Community Infrastructure Humming: An Update from the Build Workgroup from Michael Dawson of IBM

• Creating Native Addons – General Principles from Gabriel Schulhof of Intel

• The CITGM Diaries from Myles Borins of IBM

Security

• FIPS Comes to Node.js from Stefan Budeanu of IBM

• Take Data Validation Seriously from Paul Milham of WildWorks

IoT

• Node.js on Hardware: Where We Are, Where We’re Going, and How We’ll Get There from Kassandra Perch of NodeBots

• Why did the robot cross the road? Computer vision, robots and mobile games from Pawel Szymczykowski of Wedgies

• The Future is Now: How to Realize your New Potential as a Cyborg from Emily Rose of Salesforce

Node.js Everywhere

• Bitcoin, Blockchain and Node from Portia Burton of The Atlantic

• Node.js and the African Market from Ogatcha Prudence of Pilby

• The Radical Modularity from Aria Stewart of npm

Workshops

• Build a real-time multiplayer chess game with Socket.io from David Washington of Microsoft

• Isomorphic JavaScript with React + Express from Azat Mardan of Capital One

Source: Node.js Foundation

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The JavaScript community is renowned for its vast arsenal of tools to use for, well, for just about anything. This applies also to node.js, there are a plethora of tools that can make your life easier while coding and make you better at it.

Build tools are a crucial factor in creating an app or project, they are important even for running simple test suites. As we said before, the JavaScript ecosystem (that includes Node) is very rich in tools and various forms of “helping hands”. There are a few build tools that are so famous that they’re even integrated in some IDE’s. Worth mentioning in this regard are : WebPack, Brunch or Grunt and Gulp.

The boys in the big leagues are Grunt and Gulp with about half a million downloads a week. Hugely popular and used extensively. They do their job, solving the problem at hand with a few ups and downs. We must mention that using these tools and choosing the right tool depends a lot on your project and your needs. Gulp it’s pretty easy to learn and is very popular because of its flexibility, Grunt is a very good task runner with hundreds of plugins at your disposal.

Although both of them are pretty good build tools, they don’t solve every issue, but their popularity shows that they do work and have a pretty good appeal in the community. But there is another option, a simpler one.

Npm. Yes, this npm. You can use npm as a build tool. Although it may seem like an odd thing to do, it’s a perfectly valid build tool and more than that, it’s a very good build tool. It can actually do everything that Grunt and Gulp can do, but in a more elegant manner, with less maintenance needed. I’m sure there is a lot of resistance and comparisons, a lot of “it’s not meant to be used like that” but if it works for you and your projects, why does it matter?

Npm is an amazing tool, a core tool for the whole Node.js community, most people use it on a daily basis, so why not use it as a build tools as well? Npm grows every day, as new features are being developed and added, but besides the package manager role, npm also has a pretty amazing subset of functionalities for running tasks. You can check out a small tutorial on how to use npm as a built tool here in a blog post by Keith Cirkel.

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Joyent is one of the few veteran companies with experience in the cloud computing field. The San Francisco based company was started in 2004 and pioneered public and hybrid cloud computing. Joyent created leading products and services, bringing innovation to another level through Triton, and Manta solutions. Besides this, and the reason why we’re writing this article, Joyent was the parent that nurtured Node.js not just into a popular programming language, but as a standard for web, mobile and IoT architectures.

Node.js was born and raised at Joyent, that’s its childhood home. Joyent is still one of the largest users of Node, the original corporate steward that guided and built Node into what it is today. Joyent is the place where the most Node experience exists, they’ve been running Node.js in production for almost 6 years, they have the experience and the production practices to create efficient and revolutionary Node solutions. And now they’re owned by Samsung.

Corporate acquisitions in most cases imply change, but, in this situation, the bought company gets to keep its structure and organizational aspects, while the new owner will be in charge of the big decisions. Joyent will be an independent subsidiary of Samsung, they will continue to operate and function as a separate entity, but as we said, an entity owned by Samsung. How will Joyent change? And more importantly for us, what will happen to the years and years of work put into Node.js at Joyent?

This acquisition could mean trouble for Node’s evolution and progress, but, thankfully last year Joyent (and not just) took the right steps to give Node a home to grow, develop and build further. The Node.js Foundation was created as a third party, an independent non-profit entity that will supervise the evolution and progress of Node.js. As such, Node.js went into the custody of the Node.js Foundation, a consortium led by the Node community and backed by the industry, IBM, Microsoft, Paypal, Fidelity, based on open governance. The Foundation was created also to heal the split between Joyent and IO.js, but that’s another story.

Node is safe in it’s new home, but Joyent is still a huge part of it’s life and future. This is a company that grew Node and that uses and develops Node on so many different levels. The Samsung acquisition may leave them with full independence when it comes to Node, or it may not, we’ll have to just wait and see. In any regard, Joyent will forever be a part of the Node story and we’ll just have to wait and see how Samsung will use it to compete in the cloud services arena.

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BuiltinNode is a community for Node.js people, startups and communities. We want to connect and grow the community around this great language and that of course involves developers. For this reason we have a jobs section that we encourage you to use to post jobs or to check out new openings.

Although as a language, Node is pretty young, there are plenty of experienced developers out there, you just need the right tools to spot them. Node was a part of key development trends last year and it’s going to be a hot skill in the coming years. Node.js developers are in great demand, but to get in the wrestling match to find the best ones it’s good to know a few things about what exactly does a Node developer do, and what makes him/her great at his job. Hiring the best is something each company wants, for the best products and results. So how do you get the best?

It all comes up to (proven) skills in the end so let’s start there – this is what shapes and defines a great developer.

So what should a great node.js developer know? Well, a few things:

• asynchronous programming should a no brainer

• a good amount of knowledge of server-side preprocessors

• knowledge about event based programming such as the differences in concurrency models, eventloop versus multi-threading.

• complete understanding of server-side templating languages. EJS or Jade are good examples for this.

• substantial experience with github and as many open source contribution as possible

• active contributions in the Node.js community, in groups, StackOverflow and such, this is a strong indication of a dedicated developer truly interested in the development of Node.

• understanding the fundamentals of a scalable application

• skills and understanding of front end technologies, the basic HTML5 and the more advanced CSS3

• real experience with Node tools like: brunch, broccoli, grunt and the like. This will actually show what you’re developer knows on a practical side.

These are just a few of the skills that a good, nay, great Node developer should have. If he or she checks out all of them you can get that office with a view ready.

To get started on the interview process you’ll need a few good questions/requirements. So here are our two cents:

1 Explain the Asynchronous approach in Node.js

2 What can you do with underscore in Node.js?

3 Create a HTTP server in Node

4 What’s the difference between Node.js and Ajax?

5 Explain event loop and event emitter

6 How many types of streams does Node.js have?

7 What’s the most common framework in Node.js?

When you hire a developer you have to make sure he’s all that he’s stacked up to be in the technical department, but also that he is a person driven by performance and accomplishments.  Someone creative with an analytical mind, inquisitive and with a passion for all that Node.js stands for. That’s the developer you need. We’ll help you get him or her through our job board, post now any new positions you might have or know of.

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