Building Node Applications with MongoDB and Backbone

Chapter 1. Introduction and Overview

The Web, already one of the fastest developing areas in technology, is accelerating. This is both good news and bad news for those of us planning to draw income from writing software. Today, good developers have the rare opportunity to do what they love, grow their horizons, and continually evolve and derive even greater satisfaction from their work, as long as they’re willing to put in the hard work necessary to understand a huge back catalog of rapidly-expanding knowledge.

Terrific careers come at a price. As a software developer, you must continually search for the next great tool that will help you achieve more, better, faster. What you work with 10 years from now is going to be a major departure from what you are working with today—in essence, you will be retraining yourself multiple times to keep sharp.

In his 2008 book Outliers (Back Bay Books), Malcolm Gladwell presents evidence that it takes 10,000 hours of effort to achieve mastery at a professional level. Even prodigies need to put in their time to achieve success; the difference between an average performer and a superb performer comes down to the amount of practice put in by the individual. Picking up a book like this puts you into the latter category; right now you are putting in the extra time to gain more exposure to the leading edge of this craft. The future is arriving, and you will be among the first positioned to take advantage of it.

Node.js has introduced an army of programmers ...