Book Review: Hands-on Node.js

Last week, I finished reading Hands-on Node.js written by Pedro Teixeira. I very much enjoyed reading this concise introduction to Node.js, and although it’s targeted towards beginners, I certainly managed to pick up a few nuggets myself here and there.

After the obligatory introduction, the first chapter opens up with an explanation of why Node.js runs on an event loop and why JavaScript eventually got chosen as the preferred language.

The next chapter shows how to install Node.js on different platforms and also how to get npm up and running.

Chapter 3 discusses the event loop and modules. These first three chapters make up the first part of the book, which provide you with a more theoretical understanding of what Node.js is all about.

The next part of the book contains the chapters that go over the different aspects of the 25 built-in modules that come with Node.js. As the title implies, these chapters contain a lot of code examples and also provide the reader with a good amount of exercises (and also solutions). There are even a chapters that discuss how to debug and unit test Node.js applications.

So, if you want to start out learning about Node.js then this book is your first stop. You can buy the ebook directly from the author for only $ 4.99! Pedro certainly knows his stuff when it comes to Node.js, so this is a real bargain. Also make sure to check out his excellent screencast series on this very topic which are free to watch and download.

Happy learning!