My first contact with nodejs was at Yahoo's open hack event that took place at Bucharest last spring. It was fun, however I just couldn't find the time to tinker with it as much as I would've liked to.
Lately this changed, and I'm actually using it for a project we're developing at work where it fits the bill quite nicely. While I'm quite familiar with javascript I'm coding in coffeescript. Initially I was reluctant on using it especially as I'm not very found of indentation based languages, but as far as backend javascript developing goes, it's a god send.
I think that the main reason I like it despite its flaws (it's just a wrapper after all) is that it almost forces good coding practices such as using short methods and avoiding deeply nested constructs.
I'm using the
emacs coffee mode extension to compile my coffee files to js on each save. I imagine that most major editors have similar extensions as well.
Restarting node on each change can get a bit tiresome. To resolve this I'm using the
supervisor plugin:
npm install -g supervisor
And instead of starting the application with node:
supervisor -p server.js
Basically the browser can now be refreshed on each coffee file change. Neat.