There are lots of bubbly install howto's on the web concerning the Node programming environment. But what are the best practices for updating, really?

• Updating npm
• Updating node
• Updating express

Updating npm

First of all I tried the obvious:

So I'm back in L.A. and gearing up. No better way than to present at a local Drupal User's group.

We look at Features (actually a lot) vs Installation Profiles as everything in code process, which is necessary for the adoption of best practices in development.

Slides: https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dcg2pmwb_109hpc8m8c4

Video: http://blip.tv/ladrupal/installation_profiles_as_an_everything_in_code_d...

"It seems everyone is talking about using Features for "everything in code" development, but what about installation profiles? This oft-overlooked part of Drupal core is available to us all and provides the tools needed for successful, repeatable development and deployment. Victor Kane is an Drupal developer and trainer with deep roots in the Los Angeles Drupal community. He is the author of Leveraging Drupal: Getting Your Site Done Right. This presentation is a continuation of his articles on the subject at http://awebfactory.com/node/448 and http://awebfactory.com/node/458 "

Code: http://drupal.org/project/pft

I would really love some feedback on all of this.

If your business depends on adopting an agile Drupal devlopment process in Southern California, I can help. Contact me. See Mentoring at AWebFactory.

Seem to be spending more and more of my time on GitHub:

https://github.com/victorkane

Up-to-date, executable code for two great tutorials on rolling a blog with express, Node.js and a noSQL database: https://github.com/victorkane/couchblogtut

The first, Blog rolling with mongoDB, express and Node.js, takes you "through the steps required to get a fully-functional (albeit feature-light) persistent blogging system running on top of node. It was first published on February 18, 2010 by Ciaran Jessup and last updated May 14, 2010.

The second, Blog rolling with CouchDB, Express and Node.js, was published on February 7, 2011 by Ian Wootten, and was commented on just this last April.

This pedagogical repo brings it up to date (as of June 22, 2011), makes a MongoDB branch basing the persistence on MongoDB; and a CouchDB branch (ultimately merged into Master) after the more recent article.

Due to the complexity of modern software development, you absolutely have to use software for agile project management. For the simple reason that the human brain cannot by itself separate the trees from the forest, cannot zoom in to be able to concentrate without distraction on a current task, then zoom out by degrees to see the various bigger pictures.

Any software you feel helps you is fine. The lighter the better, generally speaking.

Since one of the most important considerations is that it all be as close as possible to the code, and allow full traceability from requirements to commits and back, my latest experience is making use of GitHub itself for a self-contained, light agile process tracking experience.

You can take a look at an open source example here: https://github.com/victorkane/lit/issues