It was 3 p.m. on November 8th, 2009. In a room filled with people at JSConf Europe, Ryan Dahl showed off his pet project for the first time to a sizable audience. Node.js, he called it. He had been hacking on it a little while. It was a pretty bold project. “Hey,” he told his audience, “remember what they taught you at school? Yeah, forget all you learned about how to structure programs. We’re going to rethink everything.” Indeed, Node.js required a significantly different way of programming. Different, but with big pay-offs. Node.js attacked one of the core problems in computer science -- concurrency -- in a way that took people by surprise.

There was an undeniable buzz at JSConf that year. A sense that people had witnessed something that could be huge. Sure, it wasn't there yet, but it had potential. Big potential.

At the time, Ajax.org -- the company behind Cloud9 IDE -- still made its money with consultancy. At the end of 2009, we were developing a highly-concurrent server system in Erlang. After three months of painful writing, we got the basics working. It was so hard to read the code that we never managed to stabilize it. We never felt we were in control. In a moment of anger in early 2010, we threw the Erlang server away and wrote a replacement using Node.js in two weeks.

Two weeks.

Finally, we could write in a language we loved, create readable code and build a highly concurrent server in a surprisingly short period of time. As it turned out, Ryan really was on to something.

When we decided to build Cloud9 IDE, it was only natural to use Node.js. By using Node.js for Cloud9, we could use a single language front to back. We absolutely love Node.js. However, we also recognize it’s still a young platform. A platform that, if nurtured properly, would easily become the official runtime of the cloud. But who will nurture it?

Plenty of folks have recognized Node’s potential and invested heavily in it. Joyent hired Ryan Dahl to work on node.js full-time and helped grow the community by organizing seminars and rebuilding the nodejs.org website. Mozilla has always been the driving force in the development of JavaScript, the core of Node.js -- it’s where JavaScript originates. In addition, Mozilla hosts MDN, the best resource for front-end development technologies including extensive JavaScript documentation.

As a company that lives and breathes Node, we also feel it’s our duty to contribute to the Node community in any way we can. A few months ago, we asked Tim Caswell, a prominent Node.js community member, well known for his howtonode.org blog, to join us full-time in our efforts to further build the Node community and make it more accessible to new members.

Today, we’re happy to announce a number of new initiatives that we believe will help shape Node.js into the mainstream platform of the future.

1. The introduction of Nodebits.org, the new community blog edited by Tim, featuring high-quality Node.js tutorials;
2. The introduction of Nodemanual.org, the official Node manual site;
3. The introduction of Node.js & Cloud9 IDE training for everyone from individual developers to large enterprises.

Node.js News and Tutorials

Beside howtonode, there is no frequently updated community website. No reliable source for news and in-depth articles about Node.js. So, today we officially launch Nodebits.org. Nodebits is a community blog, edited by Tim, which includes high-quality articles and tutorials about Node.js applications and libraries. The code examples presented can be tested and played with by loading them into Cloud9 with just a single click. Nothing to download and no compilation required.

Node.js Manuals and Documentation

There is no single source of comprehensive Node.js documentation, and most of the documentation that is available is incomplete or of insufficient quality.

We have completely reworked many different sources of documentation into a concise and consistent website that offers a Node.js and Javascript reference guide and manual, based on work from Joyent and Mozilla. From now on, NodeManual.org is your destination to learn about Node.js. And, like any good community docs, Nodemanual.org is fully open. We encourage everyone in the Node community help us continue to improve the site, through your own contributions. Fork nodemanual on GitHub and get started on helping us build a better Node.js.

Training

There is no place where you can get Node.js training and support. As part of our training and support program we are now offering Node.js training. You will get high quality training from Node.js specialists in a three-day course. This course will teach you not only how to use Node.js, but how to become a better programmer. Sign up now at training.c9.io.

Ruben Daniels
Cloud9 IDE, Inc. CEO