Monday, June 16, 2014

Playing with MEAN

I heard about MEAN some time ago, and today I finally installed it and played with it.

There's lots of reasons why I wanted to get into using MEAN. It's all Javascript, which means, it's good Javascript practice for me. Every self-respecting Javascript-developer should try to build at least one Node.js backed app, right?

It calls itself a Fullstack framework. I like the sound of that. I think it means that I'll have to think and learn about all the pieces involved in building a web application. Hopefully, MEAN makes the learning curve a little less steep, yet doesn't hide so much that I depend on the framework too much and never learn anything.

Just to hedge my bets, I also have a simple app that I'd like to build for myself. If all goes well, I'll 1) build an app that I find useful 2) learn. What more can a developer hope for?

And finally - the results of day 1:

The Good

I got the application running on my local machine. I was also able to set up a database on MongoHq and then I deployed the app with Heroku. My app, which is the same as the starting test app, is up on http://pocketfeeder.herokuapp.com/#!/ .

The Dumb

For quite a while, I couldn't figure out how to log into the test app. After an embarrassingly long amount of time, I realized that I just need to register a username first. When trying new things, it's impossible to not feel dumb sometimes; you just have to embrace it.

The Frustrating

Googling things with the term "MEAN" is horrible. If you didn't notice, MEAN is a real/common word, and searching with it gives pretty shoddy results. I know MEAN is a catchy acronym, but searching for a more unique word, perhaps NEMA or something like that, would have made Googling a lot easier. 

The Conclusion

The experience was positive, and I plan on playing with it in the future. So, there is no conclusion, just yet.

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