StackOverflow2013

Note that there are some explanatory texts on larger screens.

plurals

PO
text
Body
copied!<p>Most of the things you listed are related only because they are written in or otherwise use JavaScript. Comparing them is much like comparing apples to oranges. It's like asking what the difference is between a Toyota Camry and a V6 engine. They are related, but do different things.</p> <p><strong>Node</strong></p> <p>Also known as Node.js, Node is the JavaScript environment on which we run our server-side JavaScript code. It is based on the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/v8/" rel="noreferrer">V8 JavaScript engine</a>. All of the JavaScript code you write, or install and run from packages from NPM, GitHub, etc. is executed by the Node runtime environment.</p> <p><strong>CoffeeScript</strong></p> <p><a href="http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/" rel="noreferrer">CoffeeScript</a> is, plain and simple, a programming language that compiles down to JavaScript. Its purpose is to expose all the power of JavaScript in a simpler way. It's important to keep in mind that all CoffeeScript code just gets compiled to JavaScript when you run it; the differences are purely syntactical. Its website has much more information.</p> <p><strong>Backbone</strong></p> <p><a href="http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/" rel="noreferrer">Backbone</a> can be likened to as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller" rel="noreferrer">Model-View-Controller</a> framework for JavaScript. I believe it was originally written for the browser; it helps keep your client-side JavaScript clean by implementing most common MVC patterns (as well as a couple other things), allowing you to <a href="http://brandontilley.com/2011/04/18/give-your-javascript-a-coffee-infused-backbone.html" rel="noreferrer">more easily connect</a> your client-side JavaScript to your server-side code.</p> <p><strong>Express</strong></p> <p><a href="http://expressjs.com/" rel="noreferrer">Express</a> is a web framework for Node.js built on <a href="https://github.com/senchalabs/connect" rel="noreferrer">Connect</a>. It is similar in many aspects to <a href="http://www.sinatrarb.com/" rel="noreferrer">Sinatra</a> for Ruby. It allows you to easily create web sites with routing, layouts/partials/views, sessions, and more. There are a lot of third-party modules for Express, making it pretty easy to get exactly the kind of stack you need.</p> <hr> <p>There are a ton of modules out there for Node; as of this writing, <a href="http://search.npmjs.org/" rel="noreferrer">NPM</a> has over 3,000 published packages, and covering even the most popular ones would take some amount of time! Be sure to give NPM or the <a href="https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/modules" rel="noreferrer">module list page</a> a look any time you need to solve a new problem to avoid inventing the wheel (unless you want to learn a lot about wheels. :)</p>

Querying!

Guidance

An individual column

Larger individual text columns get their own page to allow for proper reading.

SQuiL has stopped working due to an internal error.

If you are curious you may find further information in the browser console, which is accessible through the devtools (F12).

Reload