Engine Yard, Inc.

S01E43: Chris Nelson

October 7, 2011

• 2:00 How MVC is shifting from server side to client side
• 2:53 Backbone.js and CoffeeScript revolutionizing front end development
• 4:35 Seamlessly structuring client side code with Backbone.js
• 6:18 The origin of Backbone.js and why it fits naturally with Rails
• 8:34 How CoffeeScript changed Chris’ approach to front end development
• 9:00 CoffeeScript as a better syntax for JavaScript
• 10:00 Where to begin? CoffeeScript for n00bs
• 11:00 Jasmine: BDD for JavaScript
• 11:42 Why Jasmine + CoffeeScript = crazy delicious
• 12:30 The Beautiful Front End Code training course
• 13:37 How Steve Jobs and the Apple IIe shaped Chris’ introduction to programming
• 19:15 Chris’ interest in node.js
• 20:20 Rails 3.1 asset pipeline for managing dependencies in JavaScript
• 20:40 The npm_assets gem to add npm modules to your Rails asset path

Links * Training: "Beautiful Front End Code with Backbone and CoffeeScript":http://training.gaslightsoftware.com/, November 7-8, 2011 in San Francisco, CA * "Backbone.js":http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/ * "Jeremy Ashkenas of Backbone.js on GitHub":https://github.com/jashkenas * "CoffeeScript":http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/ * "Jasmine":http://pivotal.github.com/jasmine/ * "Screw Unit":https://github.com/nkallen/screw-unit * "RubyConf 2011":http://rubyconf.org/ * "node.js":http://nodejs.org/ * "Rails 3.1 asset pipeline Rails Guide":http://guides.rubyonrails.org/asset_pipeline.html * "npmassets gem":https://github.com/gaslight/npmassets

More about Chris Nelson: * "Twitter":http://twitter.com/#!/superchris * "GitHub":https://github.com/superchris * "MysteryCoder blog":http://mysterycoder.blogspot.com/ * "Gaslight Software":http://gaslightsoftware.com/