How transferrable is code between Meteor and AngularJS?

Question

I'm working on a fairly large web app and right now it consists of an API in Node and a Connect static server that pushes our Angular frontend. I've been absolutely fascinated with Meteor as of late and am attracted by its structure and speed. What I'd like to know is, how long would it take me to port my existing code over to Meteor, and what advantages does it offer over Angular? Also, how much bandwidth does Meteor use? And, finally, where are some good (and free) resources to learn Meteor? Thanks alot in advance.

Answer 1

how long would it take me to port my existing code over to Meteor

That depends on you. I haven't had any project written in the "traditional way" that has not been rewritten for Meteor. But as far as I have observed, I have written less code with Meteor due some things that are taken care of by Meteor, especially the trivial tasks like linking a DB, having the client talk to the server seamlessly, hot-code, deployment etc.

what advantages does it offer over Angular?

This depends on the use case. Meteor is fully JS on both front-end and back-end. Also, one can literally share code for both sides, like in the case of Collection declarations. Also, it has taken care of most of the trivial things like basic user management, templating. It also sports a package management system Meteorite which is similar to Bower on the client or Npm on the Node.

A disadvantage of Meteor is that it's tightly bound to the backend because of the way they do things, like the socket sync and MongoDB-MiniMongo link. There are packages though that can detach it from the server and work offline but I haven't come across with a project that uses another backend (like PHP or Java) for Meteor.

how much bandwidth does Meteor use?

All I can say about Meteor is that it loads everything on first load (scripts, templates, immediately visible resources, Mongo collections). I assume they are cached on the client, so later loads won't be affected. Database changes sync fast over sockets since after the initial sync, only changes are wired through.

good (and free) resources to learn Meteor?

The only resources I refer to is their documentation. There's also an unofficial faq.