Isaac Strack - Getting Started with Meteor.js javascript Framework

Isaac Strack , as a Design Technologist for Adobe Systems, actively researches, develops, and contributes to emerging device and Internet technologies, incorporating these new technologies into the Adobe Digital Media and Digital Marketing product lines. He is on the board of directors for the Wasatch Institute of Technology, a computer science high school located in Utah that is changing the face of education through an Agile-based teaching methodology, which emphasizes real-life technology skills and STEM education.

Isaac worked for the Service Technologies group at eBay for over 11 years, where he was on the forefront of AJAX, .NET, and web-related technologies. While at eBay, he earned a web technology patent, and is one of the original developers of the Listing Violation Inspection System (LVIS), used to monitor and regulate auctions and member-to-member transactions.

Isaac has a passion for technology and design, and conveys that passion through his contributions online and in his local community. Despite his experiences to the contrary, he's still naive enough to believe what Steve Jobs said, "If you have a good idea and a little moxie, you can change the world."

I want to thank my four wonderful daughters, for teaching me what true, unconditional love is, and for making me feel young and happy, even on cold winter days. I want to thank my wife, Kirsten, for encouraging me to never give up on my stupid, stupid dreams, and for being so supportive and sacrificing during the making of this book. I'm grateful to my employer, Adobe Systems, and my manager, Joel Den Engelsen, who continually support me, and have given me my dream job. Lastly, I want to thank my Heavenly Father, for my talents and blessings, and for the love/passion I have for learning new, amazing things. I truly am better than I deserve, and I am grateful for the peace in my heart, despite my best efforts to ruin everything.

Arturas Lebedevas is a Software Developer who has been working on various projects in both Lithuania and Ireland. Previously, he was the co-founder and CTO of an Irish legal startup LawSimply, where he used Node.js extensively along with MongoDB.

Currently he is doing software consultancy focusing mainly on using Meteor framework, and has been an active member of the Meteor framework community contributing to Stack Overflow.

I would like to thank to my mother who supports me in all my decisions.

Gabriel Manricks is a Software/Web Developer born in Montreal, Canada. He learned his first programming language at the age of 12 (C++), and went on to graduate in programming science.

In addition to programming, Gabriel's hobbies include electronics and crafts; basically anything involving taking things apart, seeing how they work, and putting them back together.

Currently Gabriel is a Staff Writer for NetTuts+, where he enjoys learning and teaching cutting-edge web technologies.

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Preface

We live in amazing times. Advances in medicine, communication, physics, and all other scientific fields provide us with opportunities to create things that were literally impossible to create only a short while ago.

And yet, we aren't easily amazed. We've come to expect wondrous advances, and therefore what was once amazing becomeswellexpected. It's a rare thing, indeed, to find something that takes us by surprise. Something that renews that childhood sense of wonder we all secretly want back, because it was stolen from us.

Well, prepare to regain some of that wonder. A dedicated group of computer scientists who are determined to make something wondrous have created a new JavaScript platform called Meteor. You may be thinking, "A new JavaScript platform? That's nothing special." And if that's all Meteor was, you'd be correct, but fortunately for you, that's not the end of the story.

Meteor is a reactive, simple, and powerful application platform, capable of producing sophisticated, robust web applications with just a few lines of code.

In the context of web applications, it is state-of-the-art. Using established, proven development design patterns, Meteor takes all the difficult and mundane parts of building a web application and does them all for you. You get to focus on building a solid application with all the latest innovations such as reactive programming, templates, plugins, and client-side caching/synchronization. You get to do all of this without getting bogged down in the usual time-wasting activities, such as writing yet-another-database-interface, or learning a new templating engine.