NodeJS for Distributed Systems, Webpack, Angular 2 @ JS Meetup

Why use nodejs to build distributed systems? by Gord Tanner

js was event based from the start – browser vendors didn’t want bad web developer code to stop their browsers from running
nodejs’ event-loop makes it easier to handle concurrency. Promises, callbacks, and queues force you to keep things simpler than mutexes, semaphores, locking, shared memory
Always test your distributed app is a distributed environment. How about multiple Vagrant VMS? This is very different from firing up a few nodejs processes in your local machine where processes share RAM and a hard drive

old build tools merged all JS into a single file and uglified it
- too much js parsing up front for mobile browsers when page loads
- if 1 character of js changes, the entire merged file must be downloaded by users again
requirejs – importing dependencies is easy to mess up with typos
so try WebPack! It is big and complicated, but you can use it if you just believe, and the output is great!
- inlining images to reduce HTTP requests
- support for compilation tools for coffee script, babel
- great support for merging lots of js files into a few modules – developers can find the balance between reducing HTTP requests and downloading too much code at once
- watch out for asynchronously loading CSS – as more CSS loads and renders, conflicting rules lead to styles changing in unexpected places