Just picking up node. Should I use express or really learn node first?

Question

As the title stated, I'm just now picking up node. I've looked into Express a little, mostly by watching the videos on expressjs.com, and was pretty impressed.

However, it reminded me a lot of Rails. I always felt like I never really understood what was going on when I worked with RoR. It incorporated so much magic that it really made me unconfident and pushed me away. I don't need to get down to bare metal but I like to have a good sense of how/why things work they way the do.

It's possible just my ignorance of Jade and Sass made the Express videos look like wizardry.

Possibly pertinent: I've worked with JavaScript and some libraries (jQuery, Dojo, Raphaeljs, ESRI) for a few years now so I'm not completely js uninitiated.

Answer 1

I don't need to get down to bare metal but I like to have a good sense of how/why things work they way the do.

Node.js on its own is quite low level. I do recommend you spend a day playing around with the http module on its own before moving onto connect.

Express builds on top of connect so if you spend a few days playing around with connect and then "upgrade" to express you can start using express without feeling like it's doing all kinds of magic.

All express will offer you from there onwards a nice routing API and a view engine.

Possibly pertinent: I've worked with JavaScript and some libraries (jQuery, Dojo, Raphaeljs, ESRI) for a few years now so I'm not completely js uninitiated.

It's important to come into node with strong JavaScript skills because it makes the learning curve a lot more manageable. The important thing to learn is the asynchronous style of programming (and not making a mess of you code!)