Grunt / Knockout

Meetup starts at 6:30pm, with 30 minutes of social time. Beginning at 7pm, Mark Volkmann (http://java.ociweb.com/mark/) will present Grunt: a tool for executing Web development tasks:

Why use Grunt (http://gruntjs.com/)? In one word: automation. The less work you have to do when performing repetitive tasks like minification, compilation, unit testing, linting, etc, the easier your job becomes. After you've configured it, a task runner can do most of that mundane work for you — and your team — with basically zero effort. Mark will give us an overview of Grunt, laying the foundations for applying this powerful tool in your day-to-day development work.

After a short break, Sam Pepose (https://twitter.com/sampepose) will present Knockout: simplify your dynamic UIs:

Knockout (http://knockoutjs.com/) is a lightweight Javascript MVVM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_View_ViewModel) framework for simplifying dynamic UIs. It is declarative, dependency-free, backwards-compatible, and packs a punch for its size. Sam will demonstrate the conversion of a typical jQuery application to a Knockout-based app.

Starting about 8:30pm, we'll move into a hacking session to experiment with the material that's been presented, and with JavaScript and node.js in general.

Hatch Research (http://hatchglobalresearch.com) will be providing complementary sodas and sandwiches, and the pub downstairs serves good beer, so come hungry, come thirsty, bring your laptop and be ready to code!