Node.js & Server-Side JavaScript covers: Node.js in Practice, The Express Handbook, Node.js Web Development, Hands-on Node.js. Master Node.js — the event loop, streams, the module system, building HTTP servers, Express middleware, REST APIs, and working with databases. Understand server-side JavaScript from the perspective of someone who already knows server-side programming (Rails).
Express middleware is Rack middleware. app.use(cors()) is like config.middleware.insert_before ActionDispatch::Static, Rack::Cors. package.json is Gemfile. npm install is bundle install. node_modules/ is vendor/bundle/. Express routes map to routes.rb. The biggest difference: Rails gives you everything (ORM, migrations, mailer, jobs, asset pipeline) in one framework. Express gives you a routing layer and you assemble everything else from npm packages. This is the "convention over configuration" vs "composition over convention" debate. Rails is opinionated; Node is a choose-your-own-adventure.
This course unlocks once you've finished its prerequisite. Open prerequisite →
You will set up an Express server, look at the code, and think: "Where is everything?" No ORM. No router DSL. No middleware stack configured by default. No generators. No conventi…
Here's a question that sorts Node developers into two groups: your Express API calls fs.readFileSync once, on one route, for one small config file. How much damage can that single…
An entire Express application is this:
Try this experiment in your head. A junior engineer asks: "I know Express now — how do I add login, a Postgres model, and deploy the thing?" In Rails you'd answer in three words: …
Your API needs to let users download a 2 GB export file. Here's the naive route handler:
Work through each item before the checkpoint.
The API you have built in Rails, rebuilt where nothing is free: the middleware stack is yours to order, auth is a function you write, and the error handler only catches what you d…
7 lessons. Read in order; spiral back when you need to. By the end you'll have used the core ideas twice — once on the abstract, once on something you'll meet at work next week.