Get Programming with Node.js

I'm not far into the book, but already am quite disappointed at how many things could be explained a lot better. The evidence of the lack of structure that another reviewer alluded to are also present in the first few dozen pages I've read.The formatting is not great, either. For example, on page 32, some code you need to write is presented in a proper code block but, on the same page, some other essential code is integrated into a paragraph of editorial (along with some code you don't need).Whilst flicking through the book, the layout appears to be attractive, I'm left wondering if the author has followed "best practice" in terms of formatting, discussion and structure.Also, it's not really clear what the entry level is for book this. I'm an experienced developer with a fair knowledge of JavaScript, but I was soon left resorting to the internet after I had problems setting up my node.js development environment - not helped by the first few pages skimming through this part as if was a given or didn't really matter.Finally, Windows users are abandoned quite early on, with the advice given to go and find the required Windows-equivalents of the Linux commands online somewhere. Just seems quite lazy and inattentive on the part of the author, adding to the feeling that I would probably have got a much smoother ride from a different book.If things improve, I will update my review accordingly, but I don't have much confidence in this book so far.

I'm finding this book a bit confusing and hard to read. It doesn't seem to be sure what level it's readers are at. Some very simple concepts are explained at great length while other more complicated subjects are tossed away in a sentence. It also introduces advanced topics with little hooks to keep you reading an no explanation of what they are at the time of introduction e.g. REST is introduced with routing with 'You need to do this for RESTful routing which is covered in lesson...' which is much further through the book. Also the first section of the book teaches you how to write a routing module while section 2 is all about not having to write these things yourself by using express.jsI'm also finding doing everything in JavaScript a bit masochistic, largely because I am not used to it as a server side language (Just DOM manipulation really). I've worked with Angular in TypeScript and since it just gets converted to JS at build time I think that would be a nicer language to deal in, it feels more expressive of intent to me.

This book has helped me a lot!If you are new to node.js then you should read this book.Thanks for writing the book Jonathon Wexler!

Full disclosure, I'm only half way through this book at the moment, but I'm in love with it so far, and it has cracked Node wide open for me.I have been learning programming for 6 months now, mostly from freecodecamp (fcc). I believe fcc is amazing for frontend stuff, like HTML, CSS, and JS, the backend stuff feels rushed and brief. I tried the fcc module on Node and express, and I was completely lost. Decided to give this book a go, and it has taught me so many concepts, and in such a clear manner. From this book, I have set up my first ever server, done my first ever backend database stuff, learned what npm is and why it is so great, learned what mvc architecture is, learned folder management best practices, ejs and partials, the list really is endless, and this is only from the first half of the book. The best thing about the book is that it is so hands on and gives you a project to work on, and each stage, after doing the next part of the project, and then testing it, I'm like 'wow that really worked, and it's a lot more simple that I thought it would be'.I seriously recommend this book, although one piece of advice - if you are following this book, and the projects, make sure you also look up the code on the github page that has been set up for it by the author. I think I would have been stuck without that.