Discover Meteor
I have read the beta release of the book in its entirety. I do not know the book's authors personally, so I can give an unbiased assessment of the book and answer specific questions about the book.<p>The Crux of the Matter:<p>Coming from Node.js/Backbone.js/Express.js, I was pleasantly shocked and surprisingly inspired by how pleasurable and productive it is to develop with Meteor. I am not sure I feel this way about any other web-dev technology besides jQuery. Meteor is so awesome that it makes the book easy to get through and fun to learn from (the book is a web app, a book, and a tutorial in one; it is more than just a book, hence my use of the word “use” instead of “read”).<p>The book covers most of the big Meteor concepts with example code and it guides you along as you build the Microscope web app—a "real world" application you can deploy and actually use. You will learn so much and get through the book so quickly that you will want to develop your own web app with Meteor in an instant. Be warned: You will be giddy with excitement at how easy it is to get stuff done with Meteor. Using Meteor is analogous to using an iPhone for the first time after using one of those "smartphones" [1] that were available prior to the launch of the iPhone.<p>The alternative to using this book is to learn Meteor by painstakingly browsing and reading the thorough (but not necessarily logically organized for structured learning) Meteor docs. Forget finding a proper "Getting Started with Meteor" tutorial; they are outdated and lack depth. The book summarizes some of the important Meteor concepts in a logical, succinct, and exemplary manner, with hands-on implementation.<p>There are some specific Meteor core concepts that the book either doesn't cover or only discusses briefly, like eJSON, Deps, Custom Reactivity, and cursor.observe (similar to Backbone's model.on events). But fortunately, Chris Maher does an excellent job covering these topics in depth on EventedMind.com [2]. Therefore, I highly recommend the book along with frequent visits to EventedMind.com to get a thorough understanding of Meteor.js, so you can confidently start building Meteor apps straightaway.<p>It is worth noting that the book's format (a web app with comments, videos, frequent updates, and the main Microscope tutorial, in addition to PDF and eBook copies of the book) is groundbreaking and must be celebrated. Every book on any web development topic should be published in this manner. Authors take note.<p>Background: I am the dude blogging at <a href="http://javascriptissexy.com/" rel="nofollow">http://javascriptissexy.com/</a> and I am a Frontend Developer (JavaScript Guru). Incidentally, I will likely write a detailed blog post about Meteor ("How to Learn Meteor Properly," perhaps) in a few weeks, after I develop my first Meteor app.<p>[1] <a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/cell-phones/sanyo-katana-6600-black/4505-6454_7-31967588.html" rel="nofollow">http://reviews.cnet.com/cell-phones/sanyo-katana-6600-black/...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.eventedmind.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.eventedmind.com/</a>