Meteor has always piqued my interest. It is a relatively new full stack framework that makes typical web development seem outdated. Typically, a web developer would need to learn Javascript for the front-end and a additional server side programming language for the back-end (PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, etc) to get a complete web app up and running. Now with Meteor, we wouldn’t have to grapple with all these different technologies to build a complete web app. It allows us to write the entire web app in Javascript, getting more done with less knowledge.
I played around with Meteor a while back and when I discovered that the authors of Discover Meteor were kind enough to make their book free today, I jumped at it. The book takes a ‘learn as you do’ approach and you build a fully functional web app as you go along. Concepts were laid out clearly. Each section had links to each commit for you to reference.
One key feature that I liked about Meteor is that with every change that you make to the code, the browser automatically refreshes to reflect that change. It’s a really small thing that improves the entire development experience with the immediate feedback. Overall, it was a fun read and I learnt a lot on how Meteor works and I’m totally looking forward to build a complete web app with it real soon.
Published on 14 Dec 2013 by Stanley Tan