The MEAN Stack is a popular all-Javascript stack used for creating web applications. The name comes from its four core components: Mongo DB, Express.js, Angular.js, and Node.js. MEAN is powerful, performant, and popular – a great option for many kinds of projects, both small and large in scale.

Adopting the MEAN Stack can be a bit intimidating. Being all-JS is certainly helpful, but the four components of MEAN are each very deep and powerful in their own right – there is no shortage of learning and exploration to be had! To help with this, a number of frameworks have emerged – specific implementations of the MEAN stack that deliver a fully functional, opinionated implementation of the stack.

One of the most popular MEAN frameworks is MEAN.js. Using this framework, along with some Yeoman scaffolding, you can get a feature-rich web application up and running in minutes! With this in hand, it’s much easier to learn the components of MEAN, as you can see them all in action, debug them, and play around with them in a live sandbox.

This session will show the process of generating a new MEAN.js application and will then focus on an overview of the major components. The app will be used as a live code example for high level descriptions of Mongo, Express, and Angular. Other important aspects of the framework will be demoed in brief as well. Because of how feature-rich the framework is, there won’t be time to cover everything, but it will be a good jumping-off point for further exploration.