How did a small, completely self-funded team build a web framework that became more popular than comparable tools with million-dollar budgets? By welcoming the outsiders. Mike will recount how Sails.js grew from an internal tool to one of the most popular frameworks for Node.js, without forgetting its roots. Javascript is quickly becoming more than just the lingua franca of the web– it’s rapidly growing in popularity on servers, mobile devices, and embedded systems. In many ways, “Javascript is the new Java.” More and more backend developers are becoming familiar with tools like Bower, Yeoman and Grunt, and Angular has empowered web developers to create single page apps as part of their everyday workflow. As the industry standardizes around Javascript, it’s not only important to take advantage of new tools; we must also make sure these new tools and methodologies are accessible and understandable to developers from more traditional backgrounds. In this talk, Mike will reflect on the experiences he’s had building and managing an open-source Node.js framework, Sails.js. He’ll discuss the success we’ve had attracting interlingual developers to Sails, and share some lessons and difficulties we’ve encountered migrating a new generation of developers from PHP, Java, .NET and Rails to Node.js. He will share examples from both sides of the spectrum, both community-related and technical, including: How to encourage (not dissipate) the growth of subcultures within an open-source community How to reconcile different levels of familiarity and preference for different collaboration tools (Github, IRC, Google Groups, etc) How to assimilate the technical heritages from past frameworks (i.e. syntax, nomenclature, project structure) How to meet expectations around reference documentation, and direct community contribution towards guides and tutorials Mike is an engaging speaker with a knack for dynamic Q&A. He is passionate about the subject matter and can adapt the talk to any time frame. http://allthingsopen.org/talks/rags-to-open-source-the-story-of-sails-js/ http://allthingsopen.org/speakers/mike-mcneil/

1. from rags to open-source
Raleigh, North Carolina
2014

2. Mike McNeil
@mikermcneil
github.com/mikermcneil

3. bdfl of
the leading open-source
MVC framework for Node.js

4. the leading open-source
MVC framework for Node.js

5. over 1 , 5 0 0 downloads / day
8,030 GitHub stars
at least pageviews 830,000 since 2013

6. $0 in funding

8. est. feb 2012

10. (us)
(customer)
(Javascript app)

11. Node.js...
love at first sight
circa 2011

12. “We’re doing I/O
completely wrong.”

13. “Not acceptable!”
<— “just look at the
Unterschied!”

14. “Concurrency
should be easy.”
“Threads should
be used by
experts only.”

15. How is that possible?
(copy the browser)

16. // synchronous!
console.log(‘hi’)
vs.
// asynchronous!
setTimeout(function (){!
console.log(‘hi’);!
}, 240000000);
incredible

17. I wondered…
could we use
…for everything?

18. so…

20. You don't want to be writing all
these system calls.
You need something that gives
you… an ORM abstraction, or
something.

21. so Sails.js was born

24. Sails is an MVC framework.

25. Sails is an MVC framework.

26. Sails is an MVC framework.

27. Sails is an MVC framework.

28. Sails is an MVC framework.

29. Sails is an MVC framework.

30. Sails is an MVC framework.

31. Sails is an MVC framework.

32. first version (late 2011)

33. December 2012

35. >=20 other community adapters custom app-specific adapters

36. http://web.archive.org/web/20130514080123/http://balderdashy.github.io/sails/
first halfway-decent docs
January 2013

37. posted screencast in early 2013

38. …woke up to 1000 views

39. reddit — Feb 2013
hacker news — Mar 2013
and again two months later

41. managed to get sailsjs.org online
mid-spring 2013

42. issues
pull requests
questions

46. ????

47. ???????????

48. v0.9 introduced
a new streamlined asset pipeline

49. asset pipeline????
asset pipeline????????!!!!
“what about gulp?!”
“so thirsty…”
asset pipeline????????!!!!
asset pipeline????????!!!!
asset pipeline????????!!!!
asset pipeline????????!!!!

50. so v0.10 introduced generators.

51. feature requests
are the hydra

52. they will never stop.

53. they will never stop.
ever.

54. moral of the story

55. only write code you actually need
if someone else actually needs something,
they’ll write a pull request
only merge new code if someone actually needs
you to merge it (i.e. there’s no other way, via a
plugin or something)

58. Supporting the Community

59. Tools
Metrics
Advice

60. #sails on freenode (IRC)
issues
groups

61. Tools
Metrics
Advice

62. • Github stars
• NPM downloads / day
• Google group membership
• IRC channel activity
• Number of tagged StackOverflow questions
(and your answer ratio)

63. Tools
Metrics
Advice

64. inline jsdoc comments
are not enough
write docs in markdown
compile to HTML

65. DRY
don’t repeat yourself

66. the goal of open source
DRO
don’t repeat ourselves

67. so
make an IRC channel
start a Google group
post a YouTube video

68. but remember
support !== marketing

69. support !== marketing
( )
but remember

70. ∃
far more front-end developers
than back-end developers

71. ∃
far more front-end developers
than back-end developers
eventually
everyday backend development
will be commoditized

72. Questions?

73. from rags to open-source
@mikermcneil