In his professional career, he worked with IBM for several yearsfirst in Rome and then in the Dublin Software Lab. At IBM, Mario worked on products for brands such as Tivoli, Cognos, and Collaboration Solutions, using a variety of technologies from C to PHP and Java. He then plunged into the adventurous world of start ups to work full time on Node.js projects. He ended up working in a lighthouse, at D4H Technologies, where he led the development of a real-time platform to manage emergency operations.
Acknowledgments
This book is the result of an amazing amount of work, knowledge, and perseverance from many people. A big thanks goes to the entire team at Packt who made this book a reality, from the editors to the project coordinator; in particular, I would like to thank Rebecca You and Sriram Neelakantan for their guidance and patience during the toughest parts of the writing process. Kudos to Alan Shaw, Joel Purra, and Afshin Mehrabani who dedicated their time and expertise to reviewing the technical content of the book; every comment and advice was really invaluable in bringing this work up to production quality. This book would not exist without the efforts of so many people who made Node.js a realityfrom the big players, who continuously inspired us, to the contributor of the smallest module.
In these months, I also learned that a book is only possible with the support and encouragement of all the people around you. My gratitude goes to all my friends who heard the phrase "Today I can't, I have to work on the book" too many times; thanks to Christophe Guillou, Zbigniew Mrowinski, Ryan Gallagher, Natalia Lopez, Ruizhi Wang, and Davide Lionello for still talking to me. Thanks to the D4H crew, for their inspiration and understanding, and for giving me the chance to work on a first-class product.
Thanks to all the friends back in Italy, to the legendary company of Taverna and Centrale, to the lads of Lido Marini for always giving me a great time, laughing and having fun. I'm sorry for not being present in the past few months.
Thanks to my Mom and Dad, and to my brother and sister, for their unconditional love and support.
At last, you have to know that there is another person who wrote this book along with me, that's Miriam, my girlfriend, who walked throughout this long journey with me and supported me night and day, regardless of how difficult it was. There's nothing more one could wish for. I send all my love and gratitude to her. Many adventures await us.
About the Reviewers
Afshin Mehrabani is an open source programmer. He is studying to be a computer software engineer. He started programming and web development when he was 12 years old, and started with PHP as well. Later, he joined the Iran Technical and Vocational Training Organization. He secured the first place and received a gold medal in a competition that was conducted across the entire country in the area of web development. He became a member of Iran's National Elites Foundation after producing a variety of new programming ideas.
He was a software engineer at Tehran Stock Exchange and is now the head of the web development team in Yara International. He cofounded the Usablica team in early 2012 to develop and produce usable applications. He is the author of IntroJs, WideArea, flood.js, and other open source projects. He has contributed to Socket.IO, Engine.IO, and other open source projects. He is also interested in creating and contributing to open source applications, writing programming articles, and challenging himself with new programming technologies.
He has written different articles on JavaScript, Node.js, HTML5, and MongoDB, which have been published on different academic websites. Afshin has 5 years of experience in PHP, Python, C#, JavaScript, HTML5, and Node.js in many financial and stock-trading projects.
Joel Purra started toying around with computers some time before his teens, seeing them as another kind of a video-gaming device. It was not long before he took apart (sometimes broke and subsequently fixed) any computer he came across, in between playing the latest games on them. It was gaming that led him to discover programming in his early teens, when modifying a Lunar Lander game triggered an interest in creating digital tools. Soon after getting an Internet connection at home, he developed his first e-commerce website, and thus his business started; it launched his career at an early age.
At the age of 17, Joel started studying computer programming and an energy/science program at a nuclear power plant's school. After graduation, he studied to become a Second Lieutenant Telecommunications Specialist in the Swedish Army, before moving on to study for his Master of Science degree in Information Technology and Engineering at Linkping University.
He has been involved in start ups and other companiesboth successful and unsuccessfulsince 1998, and has been a consultant since 2007. Born, raised, and educated in Sweden, Joel also enjoys the flexible lifestyle of a freelance developer, having traveled through five continents with his backpack and lived abroad for several years. A learner constantly looking for challenges, one of his goals is to build and evolve software for broad public use.