Node.js 101: Async, Promises, Generators

I’ve been dabbling with Node.js for the past six months or so and I knew I wanted to learn more, so when I saw the local Node group was having “An Intro to Node.js and a little more” meetup, I was pretty excited. I couldn’t make it to the intro event they had in Boulder, but it sounded like the presenter was going to give the same talk and report on his recent findings. Unfortunately, this was far from an introduction. The speaker skipped quickly past the intro and jumped right to the issue he came across after his previous talk, addressing a few ways it could be tackled. The conversation turned really technical, and since I wasn’t at the first event, I continued on with the intro tutorial. The tutorial was pretty well laid out and easy to follow; I’m disappointed I missed the first event. You can Check out my progress on Github.

At the end of the talk, he asked what we wanted from the meetup. The advanced users requested very specific topics be explored, and I raised my hand to request less-advanced topics, stating that seeing their examples is really helpful and especially having a goal to work towards. Another attendee, who was clearly irritated by my request to “dumb things down,” indirectly stated that I needed to go above and beyond, learn on my own, and then come to the group to ask questions. Node is not what I do every day and it’s competing with other topics I want to learn. For me, attending the meetup was going above and beyond. This attendee wasn’t exactly fostering a sense of community for me, but I’ll look past his unfriendliness and hopefully the next meetup will be better. I also suggested that the group not build upon the previous events, as there’s little probability that I’d be able to attend a talk in Boulder. This seems like a great group of people and I look forward to attending more events in the future.