Let’s check out the web’s latest darling buzzword. The MEAN stack in cynical, sub-layman’s terms. Whoever’s turn it was to be cutesy with the nerd acronyms really nailed it this time.
MongoDB – http://www.mongodb.org/
This is our method of storage. It is the 50’s hip greaser dude to mySQL’s Pauly Shore.
According to http://www.mongodb.org/, it is agile and scalable. If you’re playing hipster developer bingo at home, you’re off to a great start. Also, it has automatic sharding. If this doesn’t make you giggle, then you need to see yourself out.
MongoDB is a key player in the NoSQL movement. That is, not relying fully (or at all) on a database for data queries. Instead using XML, JSON, etc document based solutions. No more querying one table to query another table to query another table. You get delicious data objects that bend to your will at a fraction of the overhead.
ExpressJS – http://expressjs.com/
Bundles up a bunch of NodeJS goodness to be used at our leisure. Perhaps the most expendable letter in the MEAN acronym, this is mostly to make life easier until we want/need to get under the hood of NodeJS.
AngularJS
It’s tagline is Superheroic Javascript MVW Framework. MVW!? What magical, problem solving acronym is MVW? Well it’s Model-View-Whatever. At first glance, this caused a grimace, but upon further research, it is a peaceful gesture to calm the gang mentality of MVC vs MVVM and whatever else ego tripping developers argue over when it comes to frameworks.
What it actually does, is quite impressive. It turns what used to be lifeless HTML into something alive and dynamic.
Nodejs
This allows you to write server side applications via normal javascript. After being a supporting player in all of the web hoopla since animated gifs, it finally gets to be the star.
There you go, you can now bring up this spicy hot buzzword at interviews or company bbqs and ACTUALLY know what it means. If only this existed when I needed to flub my way through the last six months.