Why you should learn Meteor now

You may have heard about it or stumbled upon another blogpost / news site which talks about one of the fastest and IMHO best way of developing modern (web)applications named Meteor.

This blog post will show you why now is the right time to jump upon the Meteor wagon and start developing rich modern web applications with the help of the Meteor framework!

Getting started in seconds

You can install Meteor on your system in seconds with just one command (see here how you can do it).
After that you can start right away with the development of great modern web applications.

The Meteor team has put a large amount of effort in the development of great resources for you.

Just start with the tutorial which will walk you through the creation process of your first application.

If you want to see what the result will be then head over to http://simple-todo.meteor.com/ and play with it. That’s what you’re going to create!

You can finish this tutorial in a matter of hours and have a solid understanding of Meteors core principles.

One language to learn

Back in the old days of web development you had one programming language on the server side (PHP, Ruby, Python, you name it) and JavaScript on the client (browser) side.
Then there might be a relational database (such as PostgreSQL or MySQL) with the SQL language and if you offer an app you need to have a good understanding of Swift / Objective C, Java and C#. Phew!

This way you always had to switch between different syntax, programming styles, IDEs, Tools, …

With Meteor you only have to learn one programming language (which is JavaScript). JavaScript is used through the whole stack (often times you can share code between the client and the server). Even your iOS and Android applications are written in JavaScript (with the help of the Cordova Framework).

This makes development much easier and also way more fun.

If you lack knowledge of JavaScript you might take this Codecademy JavaScript primer to get started.

Results in hours

I remember times when I worked on a very simple application for weeks / months just to see that nobody wants to use it.

With the help of Meteor you can express your ideas very fast and share it with your audience very fast.

As a developer you can literally hack together a prototype sitting in the meeting room while your co-founder pitches your idea and show it to your potential customer.

This is especially important for start ups which need to evaluate their idea very fast based on feedback from their early adopters and beta users.

The community

The Meteor community is awesome. So many bright minds have developed so many packages (collections of functionality you can re use in your Meteor application) and other great resources along the way.

The community is always respectful and helpful. If you have any questions don’t bother to ask them on StackOverflow or at the official Meteor forum.

Meteor hosts a Devshop once a month where people talk about different new topics of Meteor development. You can rewatch them here or watch a Devshop in real time if there is one happening here.

If you want to get in personal touch you could attend Meetups around the world.

Meteors bright future

If you think that Meteor is “yet another JavaScript Framework” than think twice. Meteor is a well funded company with people who have a broad experience in terms of modern web application development.

Famous people such as Marc Andreesen or Dustin Moskovitz support the Meteor framework.

You can be sure that Meteor won’t go away that fast. Just take a look at the official Meteor GitHub repository to see how popular and active the project is!

Great! How do I get started?

At first you should be familiar with the JavaScript programming language. So take a course like this one to learn the basics of the language.

After that you might want to start with a simple tutorial like the todo list tutorial by Meteor so that you can get a feeling about Meteors principle. Don’t get too frustrated if you don’t understand everything along they way. I’ll guarantee you that you’ll understand it later on!

Next up you should buy a Meteor related book and read through it. I highly recommend Discover Meteor (IMHO one of the best programming books out there).

After that you should join Twitter and follow Meteor related users.
You should also take a look at websites such as Crater.io (which is also written in Meteor BTW) to be up to date and get the latest interesting Meteor related blog post.

And of course you should program many apps. Don’t settle.