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As developers, we frequently encounter two things: hard problems with our tools of choice, and the bliss of discovery when we find a solution to a hard problem.

We spend most of our time-solving problems, invariably. If development - if code - was simple, we’d not need things like Stack Overflow, open source software, and tools that help streamline and optimize development. But development is complex, no matter your skill level. There will always be a need for tools, discussion, and help for code.

At NodeSource, we focus on making Node.js work well (hence N|Solid) and making sure that you succeed with Node.js. As an extension of this, today I’d like to introduce an idea - something to enable you get help, and help others.

Taking a step back: The NodeSource Spark

Internally at NodeSource, there are regularly snippets of helpful information about Node.js and the tooling ecosystem surrounding it that I’d not have known or discovered otherwise. Both as a part of building out N|Solid and Certified Modules, and our work doing research internally and externally for talks and what we publish on the blog, there is a constant flow of discussion around the gotchas and simple solutions with Node.js.

As such, I thought it would be helpful to be able to stream that distilled knowledge out to a medium where everyone can understand and consume it, hopefully learning something new in the process.

Introducing #NodeHelp

The ideas of #lazyweb and Microsoft’s awesome #EdgeBug program, are pretty fantastic. Make knowledge social, speedy, and simple.

This idea of community knowledge over social media aligns perfectly with the tagline that’s appeared, in a few forms, on the Node.js website over the years:

Node.js® is a JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient. Node.js' package ecosystem, npm, is the largest ecosystem of open source libraries in the world.

There are two parts to unpack here, event-driven, non-blocking I/O and lightweight and efficient. Event-driven and non-blocking sounds like what we think of as social media - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others. Lightweight and efficient sounds like exactly what we #lazyweb, and #EdgeBug help people accomplish - lower barriers, start working.

Having an extremely low barrier to entry is one huge benefit of Node.js. Learn JavaScript, and you can extend that into learning Node.js pretty easily. Further, having open discussions and quick iteration has been an essential part of Node.js since the io.js fork, leading into the Node.js Foundation and here, to where we are today.

With that in mind, we’d like to try something: #nodehelp.

Similar to the #lazyweb or #edgebug hashtags on Twitter, the initial goal with #nodehelp is a simple and central mechanism for asking questions about, and sharing knowledge of, Node.js. Lower the barriers, start working, share what you know.

Kicking off #NodeHelp

Starting today, we’ll be sharing fourteen tips over the next fourteen days from @NodeSource, tagged with #nodehelp, to help start sharing tips and tricks to help you get up and running with Node.js.

Additionally, we’ll be working on curating a Twitter Moment for the first week of #nodehelp with some of the best, most helpful, and most insightful tweets and threads - be sure to keep an eye out for it.

One last thing…

If you’re interested in learning about Node.js and the community in general, we’ve built out a bunch of guides and tutorials for you - we’ve got guides on npm, Node.js, Docker, and a bunch more.

Further, if you’d like to get a clearer picture overall from your Node.js apps when you’re running them in development or production, you should check out N|Solid - it’ll help dramatically cut down your bug finding and fixing time.