npm-like-im-5

:wave: Hey there! Welcome to npm-like-im-5.

This book contains the curriculum for a 6hr introduction to npm designed to be appropriate for a classically "non-technical" audience.

What's This Book About?

The goal of this book is to give you a solid foundation in npm practices and concepts. The focus is both practical and theoretical; this book takes the stance that knowing how and why to do something is critical to successfully using any technology.

Additionally, this book hopes to reveal some of the motivation of why npm has developed the way it has. Understanding the reasoning behind specific features and implementations will help you employ the myriad features npm offers at the right time, as well as help you debug, should you run into trouble.

There are 8 chapters included:

1. Introduction

We'll kick off our class by introducing npm and npm, Inc. From there, we'll talk about dependency hell and how package managers historically have attempted to solve this problem. Finally, we'll discuss how the Node.js module loader enables package managers in the Node.js ecosystem bypass dependency hell and how npm2 worked.

2. Hello, npm!

In this chapter we'll take a deep dive in npm3 and how it works. We'll focus on some of the gotchas npm3 might throw at you and teach you how to debug and fix them.

3. Up and Running

In this chapter we'll get ourselves set up with a Node.js environment using nvm. We'll learn how to update our npm and switch between versions.

4. Using Packages

One of npm's biggest value propositions is its Registry, where all the community contributed packages live. In this chapter, we'll learn how to install these packages, both locally and globally and we'll explore how packages are managed on our local machines. Finally, we'll learn about package.json, a way we can list the packages we need for a specific project.

5. Semantic Versioning (Semver)

Not necessarily a part of npm, Semantic Versioning, or Semver is a critical standard upon which all software is built, and upon which npm relies. We'll discover how Semver allows us to express the versions of a package we can use in a project as well as what version numbers are meant to express to us as software users.

6. Publishing a Package

Using packages from the npm Registry is great, but we'd all be nowhere if no one contributed their own packages. In this chapter we'll build a small project and publish it on the npm Registry. We'll also briefly discuss options npm, Inc offers the community for organizing package access.

7. Run Scripts

npm is a lot more than just a package manager! npm run scripts offer a built in way to automate tasks within your project. In this chapter, we'll learn how to write default start and test scripts, as well as how we can create custom scripts. We'll also explore the lifecycle events that npm provides by default and learn how these can be leveraged in our development workflows.

8. Conclusion

Great job! You made it. We'll summarize all the things we went through and discuss some awesome things you can do to continue your learning.