General Feedback!

[edenfull]

I really enjoyed this workshop! Thank you for preparing this material, Ben!

As a beginner to JavaScript and Node.js, it was a struggle for me to feel comfortable with the material and I had to work to keep up and get everything done. Your careful in-person explanations helped a lot, so I recommend that someone who is new to Node.js NOT try and attempt this on their own if they don't feel super comfortable with basic JavaScript concepts.

I really enjoy how each exercise builds on the previous one, and in a very incremental, gradual way. I never felt like I got lost, and I actually feel like I understood a few concepts better from your exercises than I did from Learnyounode. Not sure if it was because I had some familiarity with the material this time around, or because I felt like I was able to apply the concepts better. What I learned in general:

1. Why modules are actually important - Learnyounode only touched on them and it seemed kinda pointless when I was going through their exercises
2. How useful callbacks are!
3. Writing cleaner code in general
4. How powerful asynchronicity can be if used properly
5. Some error handling in JavaScript

Some feedback I had about specific exercises:

• Exercises 1 and 2 were clear, but this is coming from someone who did Learnyounode <2 weeks ago.
• Exercise 3 was straightforward, but I struggled with it because I needed a refresher on callbacks (which I don't feel like I 100% understand still). I think the explanation about event emitters is a little longwinded and overwhelming at the moment. The last 3 paragraphs are really what are needed, and maybe should be placed at the beginning of the hint.
• Exercise 4: I think you should just literally say here that the exercise is to implement a (boolean) check for completion. "Preventing a completion callback from firing twice" is a little confusing for someone who is still new to the concept of callbacks.
• Exercise 5: For people who are still new to Node.js, it's not entirely clear which part specifically is the stream reading logic, and how much of it to move into its own module. Maybe a hint is necessary!
• Exercise 6: I'm not sure my fetch code ever disappeared from my code at Exercise 4...?
• Exercise 7: I think having a diagram to refer to like what you drew out for us today would help to understand the difference between serial and parallel fetching, and why it is important. Also, if the user is new to JavaScript (but not programming), they may not know about "arguments". Using numbers here ("Step 1", "Step 2", etc.) might help to make the hint seem less overwhelming.

Thanks again for a great day! Looking forward to seeing this as a final NodeSchool module. It's going to be fantastic. :)

[balupton]

Thanks @edenfull, I really love that you take the time to provide such valuable feedback.

I'll keep this open until I have some time to go through and address the particular issues. I'm considering introducing an exercise 6.5 to make optimisations like the justonce function we created a bit more explicit. Then introduce a exercise 8 to use taskgroup, and exercise 9 to use chainy.

It would also be valuable, as you said, to cover the concepts that were drawn up on paper:

• The difference between parallel, serial, synchronous, and asynchronous
• How "ticks" and the event loop work in JavaScript, and how that can cause an unexpected state+stacktraces, and how errors are recovered, including c++ land
• There was another piece of paper, but I forget what it was

Not sure if these should be exercises, or referenced material in an exercise somewhere.

Doing the setTimeout example that I went through with you to understand closures would perhaps be a valuable as an exercise, perhaps an introductory one.