Year: 2016

Well, you should! Here’s why:

Firstly, because it’s cool, and we mean it! If you want to come across as a trendy, up to date programmer, you should be able to create a working system on any up-and-coming platform, basically because every other fellow computer geek such as yourself will. And you don’t want be the one who never gets the small talk during lunch break, the one that is constantly interrupting for further explanations and clarification. You don’t want to be that guy, you hate that guy. And if this wasn’t a good enough reason, we’ve got a few more compelling arguments as to why node.js should be the go-to platform for your web development projects.

It’s pretty popular and easy to learn

One of the main traits that should entice you to build in node, is the fact that it isn’t that hard to learn, and you probably already have, yet don’t know it. If you are already familiar with JavaScript, there really isn’t that much learning effort.

It makes real-time apps a piece of cake

You can finally kiss writing sockets and protocols goodbye and say hello to real-time, two-way connections, because multi-user is Node-event-loop’s cup of tea. Therefore, the server is no longer the sole data pusher, where the client is able to initiate communication just as easily, allowing both parties to exchange data freely.

It doesn’t block your code

Yes, if you haven’t wrapped your head around it just yet, we’ll raise you this one: Node is utterly event driven, which basically means most of the code is run based on callbacks, so the application becomes available for further requests instead of pausing or sleeping.

It’s got a welcoming community

Like any other popular platform or product, node.js has built around itself a great, influencing community, contributing on a daily basis to its enlargement and development from the very core. And a great community, namely means a bunch of smart people, available for constant help, support and shared opportunities.

With these and plenty other amazing features, Node.js has made a quite a name for itself in the web development world and has been gaining adherents with every passing day.

So if you’ve made it this far, welcome to the future of web development! You’re gonna love it!

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Today we’re going to talk about a very cool product made in Node.js, called SConfig.

As the title goes, it’s a CDN for configuration data and files that allows you to keep, manage and access them all in one place. SConfig is a Node.js client for sconfig.io encrypted configuration storage. It’s a practical service that secures your applications easily. Basically, it’s an awesome, scalable and secure way to protect your config files. You can define as many applications as you want, or any number of versions. They’re easy to access through an API call from the servers. It uses strong multi-factor authentication (from UNLOQ) and AES-256 encryption to protect your data.

SConfig uses the Thorin.js framework created by UNLOQ, we talked about them in a previous article. It’s built from the bottom up in JavaScript, front and back end. If you read about Thorin.js you know it’s a modular framework, and SConfig is built using some of the Thorin modules. It’s all made in Node.js, which is pretty amazing.

Here’s how it works:

You can check out the full presentation of SConfig here, and see their Github account here.

SConfig is a product meant for developers, meant to make accessing files easier and safer. It’s destined for small devops teams and large departments. To be able to use the service you have to download the UNLOQ app and create an account. The token that you received on the app will be used to login securely.  The entire relationship between the device (the app), the browser and the servers is dealt with encryption keys and tokens, making the data stored in your account private. File content encryption is done in the browser and the servers only get encrypted data, having no clue what it is. It uses zero knowledge proof to make sure all your data is private, even to SConfig.

Give it a try, it’s free for up to 5 applications.

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Every Node developer is familiar with the Node.js Foundation, but not everybody know how it works and what are its actual activities. We’re going to shed some light on these issues.

The Foundation is on a mission to enable the adoption of Node.js on a large scale and accelerate its development. As the name entails, it doesn’t have any commercial implication, it’s not a company that markets or sales a product, it’s a foundation with an open governance model, driven by the community. The Node.js Foundation is the steward of Node.js, helping it grow and evolve on a long term basis.

You can get in depth information about the Governance, By-Laws, Trademark Guidelines and other in the Foundation section of their website.

So, who’s in charge?

The Foundation is governed by a Board of Directors composed of representatives from the corporate members. There are three tiers of corporate members, platinum, gold and silver. Each tier has a presence in the board, as follows: every platinum member gets one seat on the board, for every 3 gold members there is an election to choose a representative and for every 10 silver members the same thing happens again. If you check out the membership right now you’ll see a lot of big names there, companies that adopted Node early on and are heavily based on it. Besides the corporate members there is also on the board a representative of the Technical Steering Committee and one elected by the individual membership class.

This brings us to the individual membership issues. You can also be a part of the Node.js Foundation. The membership costs 100 $ per year, or 25 $ for students. If you are an active contributor to the Node.js projectsor in any of its sub-projects you are eligible for free membership.

The board at this time is composed of:

• Chairperson: Danese Cooper, distinguished member of technical staff – open source at PayPal.

• Vice-Chairperson: Scott Hammond, chief executive officer at Joyent.

• TSC Director: Rod Vagg, chief node officer at NodeSource.

• Gold-level Director: Charlie Robbins, director of engineering at GoDaddy.com.

• Silver-level Director: Brian McCallister, chief technology officer of platforms at Groupon.

• Director: Todd Moore, vice president of open technology at IBM.

• Director: Colleen Evans, principal program manager at Microsoft.

• Director: Rich Sharples, senior director of product management at Red Hat.

• Director: Imad Sousou, vice president and general manager at Intel.

• Director: Ashley Williams, individual membership director.

• Director: Feross Aboukhadijeh, individual membership director.

By checking out the Node.js board you can get a good glimpse of what companies are actively involved in node.js (a great piece of information if you’re job hunting)

Besides the Board, there is also a Technical Steering Committee that has a representative on the board. The TSC sets the technical direction of Node and handles everything related to the technical development (releases, standards, repo hosting etc)

The Node.js Foundation may seem to some like some sort of mysterious entity, but actually it’s made from the ground up from node people. No matter the company, no matter the brand, there are all developers interested in node.js, caring and growing it. Just think of it as a parent taking care of a child (the child being Node), only it’s not just one parent, there’s dozens, hundreds and more. Anybody can be a contributor to the node.js project, individuals can be nominated as collaborators by TSC members and if the nomination is approved, that person gets the actual invitation to become a node.js contributor. You can dive in the contributing process here if you’re interested to find out more.

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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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Why do we love Node.js? Because some of the greatest platform we use on a daily basis are built in Node and working wonders for their functionality and user friendliness. 

In this weeks post we would like to showcase three of the most beloved services you might not know are using Node.js as the main technology in their development. 

So here are the three cases we cannot overlook when talking about Node.js success stories! Did you know they were built in Node?

Building with Node.js at LinkedIn

As you might already know, LinkedIn Mobile was originally powered by Ruby on Rails, now being one of the biggest and coolest Node.js apps in production. With Node.js the LinkedIn development team wanted to move to an asynchronous event system. Another reason for which Node seemed to be a great fit for the app was the possibility for the client to make a single request for a page. 

Node.js just made their job easier, as we can infer from the very first iteration of the app called “Simplify”. Not only was the code simplified, but after transitioning to Node.js, the number of machines used to host the service was reduced to more than 10:1. 

LinkedIn uses more than one technology for their services, but on the server side, the mobile software stack is entirely built in Node and the main reason for this great switch was scale. On the other hand, LinkedIn mobile app has to communicate to the platform API and database, which made Node the perfect match since talking to other services is mainly Node.js’s cup of tea.

LinkedIn is one of the greatest proofs that an up-and-coming technology can work properly and be a great fit even for such complex apps, serving the needs of the system like no other. 

Node.js drives Uber

Talk about taking risks! Uber’s has adopted two up-and-coming language platforms for its main operations: Node.js and Google Go. As a matter of fact, Uber was one of the earliest adopters of Node and moreover one that has built a succesful business on its grounds. 

How does Node drive Uber? Well, imagine that when an user visits the website or uses the app to see available vehicles or book a ride, most of the systems involved in the process run on Node because mainly all dispatching systems at Uber run on Node. 

Node’s libraries are a steadfast support for parallel I/O service integration which allows Uber developers to be more productive and  it’s also what makes it a reasonable choice as the primary technology behind Uber’s core services. Uber’s Node.js app focuses on application logic, event sourcing and integration which improves and simplifies its’ resiliency.

Netflix and code in Node.js

What does Node.js do for Netflix? It enables Netflix to streamline the development while cutting build times and growing the level of UI customization.

The Netflix team is thrilled with Node.js’s suitability for their company and is planning to take use of this great technology furthermore. They are currently developing a way to write scripts as individual Node apps that will allow for containers to be run and debugged locally. They are also planning to release Codex, a set of capabilities that can deliver specific features depending on customer settings and the devices that are being used. And this is great news for programmers everywhere because Codex will be an open source Node.js project. 

These are just three examples of successful businesses that take pride for always staying on the cutting edge of technology and making an amazing outcome of it. 

We are tremendously inspired by their courage and great success and we encourage companies to consider Node.js as an addition to their development. We want BuiltinNode to be a place of inspiration for current and future Node.js entrepreneurs so hopefully this will inspire you to start building your own projects in Node.js!

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Cron-J is a full service Information Technology services company. We provide an array of technology, consulting and outsourcing services. In a short span of time we have successfully delivered our high quality services to a global clientele.We holistically combine your present state-of-the-art architecture with our world class services to take your business to the next level of excellence.

Learning a new skill, learning something new, be it a programming language or something else,  is a challenge, but it also depends a lot on the resources you use. Our life is, or should be, a constant journey of development and learning; there is always not just room for more, but opportunity and benefits of practising your mind and gaining insights into all sorts of things. Of course this doesn’t apply just to programming languages, it’s not about learning them all. But as a general rule of thumb, knowing and learning is very much living.

Many of us have big dreams and plans when it comes to self development, we want to learn German (it’s not impossible), node.js, how to use a bow, how to fix a car, how to build a fort (forts are cool) and more. We want, we try and every so often, more often that most of us would like to admit, we give up. And we swipe our failure under the rug of “At least I tried”.

The resources we use to learn something new are equally responsible, together with our own desire to succeed,  for our success or failure. Some people resonate better with a certain learning environment, some likes books, others like videos and so on and so forth. When it comes to programming languages you have a lot of different types of resources available out there, there is a lot of material explained in all sorts of way so you can definitely find something that clicks with your process.

We’ll show you a few resources that can help you learn or better understand node.js, resources that take you from your level, be it beginner, master node expert or anything in between.

1 The Node beginner book

Of course we’ll start with the beginner level. This is a short book, simple and easy to comprehend, great for starting up. Break it layer by layer and you’ll be have an easier time climbing the learning ladder. You can find the book here.

2 Practical Node.js

This book is a great guide after you’re more familiar with node, it has a nice guide for building all sorts of real life apps. It goes through the whole toolkit, taking you step by step through the whole process. It’s available here.

3 Node: up and running

This one is great if you have a bit of a know how in JavaScript. It’s really useful to get in depth knowledge when it comes to Node.js. It covers several interesting topics like loop architecture. It’s worth a read. Available here!

4 Smashing Node

Smashing Node is a very complex book, ideal for developers with vast previous experience in JavaScript, a great resource that encompasses all the tools and features you need to know to build a great Node.js application. You can get it here.

These are just a few recommendations, there are a lot of great books out there about Node.js, books and other type of resources that can help you understand and master it. Each one of the books that we shown here take you from a different stage of knowledge, some take you as a blank slate other take into account a substantial amount of already accumulated knowledge.

Other useful resources that you might want to try out are: mastering Node.js, available in different formats (for free), the node.js documentation or YLD’s video tutorials,

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