Fred K. Schott: The Node Way | NodeConf ONE-SHOT | JSFest Oakland 2014

To fully master Node.js, you need to understand its personality. A framework's personality and guiding principles influence everything around it. While it's possible to write JavaScript in a hundred different ways, the Node.js philosophy affects everything from the different arguments a callback can take to the actual architecture of Node.js applications. Some of these patterns are easy to spot, but most are quite subtle. In all, it takes months or even years to fully grasp them all on your own. "The Node.js Way" is a collection of everything I've learned over the last few years, from working with Node.js on open-source projects, in the enterprise, and while writing The Node.js Handbook (https://github.com/FredKSchott/NodeJS-Handbook). It includes design patterns, best practices, and tribal knowledge, all distilled and compiled into four main sections: **Structure** (ex: "Build modules to serve a single purpose"), **Community** (ex: "Choose composition over inheritance", "Write modules for others to read"), **Async** (ex: "Leverage flow control", "return early"), and **Stability** (ex: "Handle errors close to the source"). The goal of this talk is to shorten that learning curve from years down to just 20 minutes. While this talk will be most valuable to the intermediate and advanced, it will all be understandable and exciting to beginners as well.