Internet is the most fabulous education tool I have ever seen! This summer I was perfectioning / sharpening up my skills in Django when, out of the blue, appeared a post in a blog talking about how the author switch from Django to Node.js. You know me! I’m only loyal to my Family and to OUR Science but when we talk about new technologies…. I’m very promiscuous!!! So, I read from the beginning to the end.
Node.js was already on my radar (you remember that Touristologists have a radar, don’t’ you?) but I haven’t gone deeper on this server-side javascript technology.
What do you mean by going deeper, Jordi? Well I mean to begin a tough and painful transformation! Basically,
A) To change my mental framework from Touristology to Web-Enginnering.
B) To change my laptop for creating presentations and answering hundreds of e-mails (literally!!!) to one ready to test web-servers, Databases (Relational and NoSQL), my favorite frameworks (both server-side and client-side) and the incredible Eclipse (no Touristologists I’m not talking about vampires!!!). You know me, always trying to control everything! In Tourism the whole chain of value, in Web-Engineering to be a “full-stack” developer.
C) Last but, definitely, not least to change my attitude from I-know- what-I-am-doing-and-where-I-want-to-end-up, to let’s-trail-and-error-don’t-worry-about-the-pitfalls-and-enjoy-the-intelectual-journey!!!!
After reading the blog, I started a search in Internet, completed a master class by the creator of Node.js himself, practiced the ideas of this interesting blog to get my hands code-dirty and got a good definition of the Real-Time web “The real-time web is a set of technologies and practices that enable users to receive information as soon as it is published by its authors, rather than requiring that they or their software check a source periodically for updates.”
In a nutshell, the difference between normal web servers and Node.js is the same as between a trained mind dealing with multitasking and a normal one. The trained one will focus on one task when it is necessary and will focus on another when it is not. Not trained minds keep attention (resources / threads) in all tasks at all times. So they collapse or their productivity goes down!!!
Real-Time Chats… Server-Sent Events…seem to be the hot topics in Real-Time web. Are they able to deal with data in the server and in the client side? It seems so!!! Not so long ago, data-rich web application was an oxymoron (I love to use the word oxymoron, I use it to express that “To think that people willing to catch the new offer will become a loyalty customer is a good example of an oxymoron.” here).
Anyway, after getting the knowledge, I began to pass it through Touristology’s glasses (always two hands theory: Technological Scheme and Business Model, remember?) The incredible opportunities that node.js (or any of the existents and future Real-Time web utilities) provides to Tourism are, so obvious for a Touristologist that it is not necessary to provide any example…. just kidding Touristologists! Let’s see some ideas about how to use it in our beloved sector!
Imagine you want to create a mobile app which will allow a tourist guide to manage a group of 100 tourists. You want, in real time, to know where they are, to make a chat with each one of the members and to play a game (Gamification, remember?) in a customized way.
You also want to show the nearest restaurant to each one of the tourist, ordered by popularity among their friends (you choose the Yelp API to get information about restaurants and the Facebook API to get friends approvals/recommendations).
If you ask a programmer to do that they will say that it is tough: too many concurrencies, to many people accessing to your server… tough? Welcome to the Real-Time Web programming!!!
You know that one of the fundamental ideas of our science it is that we have to provide servuction from the beginning to the end of the trip, to make this possible the members of the chain of value have to get and share the 3 C’s (Content, Commerce and Community) in the ways we talked about here: Customized, Syndicated and Pro-Amized. With Node.js the creation of RestFul services in order to share the 3C’S is as easy as just wishing it! Then you can create Real-Time applications that work faster, something very important when you are thinking about mobile applications!
I find and share with this tweet and interesting example….
Node.js was already on my radar (you remember that Touristologists have a radar, don’t’ you?) but I haven’t gone deeper on this server-side javascript technology.
What do you mean by going deeper, Jordi? Well I mean to begin a tough and painful transformation! Basically,
A) To change my mental framework from Touristology to Web-Enginnering.
B) To change my laptop for creating presentations and answering hundreds of e-mails (literally!!!) to one ready to test web-servers, Databases (Relational and NoSQL), my favorite frameworks (both server-side and client-side) and the incredible Eclipse (no Touristologists I’m not talking about vampires!!!). You know me, always trying to control everything! In Tourism the whole chain of value, in Web-Engineering to be a “full-stack” developer.
C) Last but, definitely, not least to change my attitude from I-know- what-I-am-doing-and-where-I-want-to-end-up, to let’s-trail-and-error-don’t-worry-about-the-pitfalls-and-enjoy-the-intelectual-journey!!!!
After reading the blog, I started a search in Internet, completed a master class by the creator of Node.js himself, practiced the ideas of this interesting blog to get my hands code-dirty and got a good definition of the Real-Time web “The real-time web is a set of technologies and practices that enable users to receive information as soon as it is published by its authors, rather than requiring that they or their software check a source periodically for updates.”
In a nutshell, the difference between normal web servers and Node.js is the same as between a trained mind dealing with multitasking and a normal one. The trained one will focus on one task when it is necessary and will focus on another when it is not. Not trained minds keep attention (resources / threads) in all tasks at all times. So they collapse or their productivity goes down!!!
Real-Time Chats… Server-Sent Events…seem to be the hot topics in Real-Time web. Are they able to deal with data in the server and in the client side? It seems so!!! Not so long ago, data-rich web application was an oxymoron (I love to use the word oxymoron, I use it to express that “To think that people willing to catch the new offer will become a loyalty customer is a good example of an oxymoron.” here).
Anyway, after getting the knowledge, I began to pass it through Touristology’s glasses (always two hands theory: Technological Scheme and Business Model, remember?) The incredible opportunities that node.js (or any of the existents and future Real-Time web utilities) provides to Tourism are, so obvious for a Touristologist that it is not necessary to provide any example…. just kidding Touristologists! Let’s see some ideas about how to use it in our beloved sector!
Imagine you want to create a mobile app which will allow a tourist guide to manage a group of 100 tourists. You want, in real time, to know where they are, to make a chat with each one of the members and to play a game (Gamification, remember?) in a customized way.
You also want to show the nearest restaurant to each one of the tourist, ordered by popularity among their friends (you choose the Yelp API to get information about restaurants and the Facebook API to get friends approvals/recommendations).
If you ask a programmer to do that they will say that it is tough: too many concurrencies, to many people accessing to your server… tough? Welcome to the Real-Time Web programming!!!
You know that one of the fundamental ideas of our science it is that we have to provide servuction from the beginning to the end of the trip, to make this possible the members of the chain of value have to get and share the 3 C’s (Content, Commerce and Community) in the ways we talked about here: Customized, Syndicated and Pro-Amized. With Node.js the creation of RestFul services in order to share the 3C’S is as easy as just wishing it! Then you can create Real-Time applications that work faster, something very important when you are thinking about mobile applications!
I find and share with this tweet and interesting example….
My advice? Be use to the two hands mentality Touristologists! You will end up becoming a better Touristologists!!!
Nice blog and absolutely outstanding. You can do something much better but i still say this perfect.Keep trying for the best. Hire Full Stack Developers
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