Learn Node.js - books, materials, courses

Dec 27, 2013, 7:14:08 PM

Learning Node.JS

Collection of free resources to dive into Node.js.

I prefer quite small, useful and clear articles/books (and I would not be so clever to post official docs links here, I hope you have already found it and know what to do in case of emergency :)).
I'll try to order it from very basic to more sophisticated, so if you don't know where to start... just start from the very beginning of the list.

English

The Node Beginner Book

Good point to start, cover very basic "Hello World" server app, very good explanation of request routing implementation.

Mixu's Node book (available in different ebook formats)

It cover simple server application flow, some JS basics and flow control in Node.js, fundamental Node libs and approaches. Main advantage of this book is - there are covered a lot of essential things and things like Flow Control are described from the ground to allow deep understanding (not just high level lib usage like Async etc.).

Interactive Node.js lessons

Install interactive lessons via npm, run in terminal and follow instructions/tasks. Mostly it ask you to write some script and then verify.

Node.js streams handbook + Node.js streams playground

Cover the most essential part of Node.js is Streams - they provide most of Node's magic and flexibility. It is very important to understand how to operate with Streams and that a lot of "Node's internal" (like Http Request/Response) are Streams and all Stream-things could be applied there too.

Russian

Скринкасты Ильи Кантора по Node.js

Очень хорошие последовательное введение в важные аспекты разработки на Node.js. Аналогов на англ. языке я не знаю. Последовательно изложено от азов, до написания реального приложения.

Deep understanding and learning JavaScript

The thing is you can't write programs with Node.js while you do not know JavaScript, that's why this is an essential step to be familiar with JS coding techniques and have a good understanding of "what is going on". Otherwise Node.js will stay a "tricky magic" for you.

ECMA-262-3 in detail and ECMA-262-5 in detail

There is also a Russia version too. Must read recommendation. Execution Contexts, Variable object, This, Scope chain, Closures, OOP - all these aspects covered on byte level, this set of articles gave me some understanding on "how it works" in JS :)
JavaScript Closures explained
JavaScript Immediately-Invoked Function Expression (IIFE)

Also 2 aspects that are quite hard to understand from the very beginning
JavaScript Garden

Tips & tricks, the most quirky parts of the JavaScript you should know about
Learning JavaScript Design Patterns, a book by Addy Osmani

At least make a quick loot through it. And when you will need one - get back to it and re-read needed abstract.

What's next ?

If you have handled these resources, that you are able to go further on our own and find yourself docs on special aspects that you feel you require. Also feel free to add some resources in comments here.

1 Kudos Don't move!