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Web Development with Node and Express
book

Web Development with Node and Express

by Ethan Brown
July 2014
Intermediate to advanced
329 pages
8h 50m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Web Development with Node and Express

Chapter 1. Introducing Express

The JavaScript Revolution

Before I introduce the main subject of this book, it is important to provide a little background and historical context, and that means talking about JavaScript and Node.

The age of JavaScript is truly upon us. From its humble beginnings as a client-side scripting language, not only has it become completely ubiquitous on the client side, but its use as a server-side language has finally taken off too, thanks to Node.

The promise of an all-JavaScript technology stack is clear: no more context switching! No longer do you have to switch mental gears from JavaScript to PHP, C#, Ruby, or Python (or any other server-side language). Furthermore, it empowers frontend engineers to make the jump to server-side programming. This is not to say that server-side programming is strictly about the language: there’s still a lot to learn. With JavaScript, though, at least the language won’t be a barrier.

This book is for all those who see the promise of the JavaScript technology stack. Perhaps you are a frontend engineer looking to extend your experience into backend development. Perhaps you’re an experienced backend developer like myself who is looking to JavaScript as a viable alternative to entrenched server-side languages.

If you’ve been a software engineer for as long as I have, you have seen many languages, frameworks, and APIs come into vogue. Some have taken off, and some have faded into obsolescence. You probably take pride in your ability ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781491902288Errata Page