Question

There is a server part to this project, written for Node.js, and a client part, written for the browser. The server stores the system’s data and provides it to the client. It also serves the HTML and JavaScript files that implement the client-side system.

The server keeps a list of talks proposed for the next meeting, and the client shows this list. Each talk has a presenter name, a title, a summary, and a list of comments associated with it. The client allows users to propose new talks (adding them to the list), delete talks, and comment on existing talks. Whenever the user makes such a change, the client makes an HTTP request to tell the server about it.

The application will be set up to show a live view of the current proposed talks and their comments. Whenever someone, somewhere, submits a new talk or adds a comment, all people who have the page open in their browsers should immediately see the change. This poses a bit of a challenge since there is no way for a web server to open up a connection to a client, nor is there a good way to know which clients currently are looking at a given website.

A common solution to this problem is called long polling, which happens to be one of the motivations for Node’s design.

This is a book about getting computers to do what you want them to do. Computers are about as common as screwdrivers today, but they contain a lot more hidden complexity and thus are harder to operate and understand. To many, they remain alien, slightly threatening things.