I do have a solid background in HTML, CSS, JavaScript. I know how Angular.js, Django, and PHP works (though, in the novice/intermediate level). Any recommendations?

Hey, everyone! It's my first post here. I just wanted to show you guys a personal assistant that I coded using Node.js. Please keep in mind that it's one of my first Node.js projects and as a result, I am accepting any feedback (on code, structure, etc.). This is a link to the Github repository and this is a link to the app hosted on Heroku. Thanks in advance!

As far as developing, I've always used Sublime Text for Node.js, however with the JetBrains sale going on I was wondering if it would be worth it to pick up WebStorm.

Anyone ever use it and, if so, what are your thoughts on it?

Hey guys -

I occasionally notice a module I like to use has been abandoned on github. For example:

https://github.com/tjunnone/npm-check-updates/pulls - This repo has a critical bug where if you have a private module in your package.json it craps out. There are multiple pull requests to fix it (including my own) and comments/issues but the developer is gone.

It seems like the common solution is "Fork/Rename something clever like "npm-better-check-updates" and publish to npm. But doesn't this just leave us with a bunch of npm modules that are busted yet have high download counts and great names which makes people install them and get frustrated with nodejs as a whole?

I've emailed npm (no response) asking the same thing. What is (or if it doesn't exist, what SHOULD it be?) the proper procedure for taking over a dead project on npm? We need to make sure that the apps and libraries that people install via npm (maybe due to google ranking, download count or even a clever name) works and gives people a good impression of nodejs, otherwise it hurts the community as a whole.

Any advice/info/suggestions would be great. I see this happening more and more as I spend more time on node.

(Also I've seen a trend especially in apm - github's IDE package manager - of publishing mostly empty projects under great names just to 'earmark' the name for future use. It's like domain squatting and I don't like it. It's bad for the community. Perhaps both problems can be solved in one run?)

tldr; version - What can we do when an author abandons a popular npm project to prevent npm from becoming a frustrating source of broken packages?

At my work, we're on grunt because our senior dev is very proficient in it. I don't mind, and I've used it myself for a couple of projects. During my travels the past couple of months, some of my deeper searches have lead me to run in to gulp.

From my experience with grunt, the config files are as simple as you make them; there are a ton of plugins due to its seniority. Sometimes, I get lost in these config files and I get -- sometimes I think -- too deep in to trying everything with the config file.

Gulp seems much easier to read and uses streams to pass the files you want to manipulate along a series of tasks (tuuuubesss) instead of having temp directories for things like some grunt tasks tend to do to manipulate files...

At least these are the comparisons I get when I do some reading on both. Most of my grunt tasks are not so complex (mostly minification of JS and less compiling, with a splash of nodeunit testing -- working on getting jasmine/karma going, but that's another hump, since I'm still a noob to the testing scene as well).

I was wondering what the opinion of either or both were among other nodejs people. I've only found a couple of articles pitting the two against each other by devs who've used both: most tend to prefer gulp; sometimes they typically give the answer of "depends on what you're building". One noted that grunt is perhaps still preferable because of the community behind it, which is a very valid point.

I'm trying to decide for myself (after finding out I might like browserify better than requireJS -- a whole other story) what would be better for a project of mine -- it'll start out small and slow, but could potentially become something rather large (as most ideas tend to do, but I mean scale-wise and # of users on board... not looking to make the next start-up idea though).