Question

A skill-sharing meeting is an event where people with a shared interest come together and give small, informal presentations about things they know. At a gardening skill-sharing meeting, someone might explain how to cultivate celery. Or in a programming-oriented skill-sharing group, you could drop by and tell everybody about Node.js.

Such meetups, also often called users’ groups when they are about computers, are a great way to broaden your horizon, learn about new developments, or simply meet people with similar interests. Many large cities have a JavaScript meetup. They are typically free to attend, and I’ve found the ones I’ve visited to be friendly and welcoming.

In this final project chapter, our goal is to set up a website for managing talks given at a skill-sharing meeting. Imagine a small group of people meeting up regularly in a member’s office to talk about unicycling. The problem is that when the previous organizer of the meetings moved to another town, nobody stepped forward to take over this task. We want a system that will let the participants propose and discuss talks among themselves, without a central organizer.

The full code for the project can be downloaded from eloquentjavascript.net/code/skillsharing.zip .

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.