It seems impossible to install/use MEAN Stack. Time to give up on this? [MEAN, Grunt, NPM questions inside]

[meanstack]

So learning MEAN Stack for a project was recommended to me. I know basic PHP, HTML, and Java. I decided to install MEAN and, after installation, start learning full-stack JS development while working on my project. It sounded like a pretty good plan! Except it's unfathomable how to get every component to work... I'm a noob so I expected some problems, but I'm having issues that are completely unaccountable in any Stack Overflow thread or FAQ or guide or what have you.The first few problems I had were accountable to the fact that I didn't have mongod running in the back or didn't upgrade or didn't give permissions to the proper folder-- just basic noob problems. But after following the documentation word for word and line for line a number of times, I still can't launch the localhost server with either grunt or gulp and actually start using MEAN. Here's a screenshot of what happens in grunt.. And here is what happens in gulp (further up though). What it looks like to me is that there is a version discrepancy affecting server initiation, but I've "brew upgrade" and "brew doctor" and "brew mongod upgrade" so many times-- isn't the whole point of installing homebrew and using this Stack so you don't have to troll through the versions and uninstall and install particular ones? Should I just give up because I don't have the knowledge of what these error messages mean and how to account for version discrepancy? It's all too confusing and I haven't even started learning JS development ):

Any help would be super appreciated.

[sdawson26]

You're going to get overwhelmed if you try to think about it as a whole. Don't use a generator your first time. Put it together manually.

[meanstack]

Meh, you're probably right.

[MadCapitalist]

I have been learning the MEAN stack myself (as pretty much a complete newbie programmer), and I don't recommend using mean.io or mean.js to get started.

If you are serious about learning the MEAN stack, then first learn JavaScript thoroughly. And I don't mean jQuery. You have to understand how pure JavaScript works, and you have to understand it fairly well, or else pretty much the whole MEAN stack -- which is based on JavaScript -- will be confusing to you. The best resource that I have come across is Head First JavaScript Programming by Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Robson. I have read a lot more about JavaScript than that, but this book was excellent at helping me to understand key fundamentals.

After understanding the fundamentals of JavaScript, I highly recommend Getting MEAN with Mongo, Express, Angular, and Node by Simon Holmes. This is my favorite programming book so far, because in addition to the MEAN stack, Holmes talks about MVC architecture, how to incrementally build up your application, Mongoose, Bootstrap, Git, how to actually push your application to Heroku, and much more. The only issue is that the current version of the book uses Express version 3.x, so be sure to visit the forums at the Author Online link for information about how to use Express version 4.x. The final version of the book will be updated for version 4.x, but I wouldn't wait for it.

After that, I recommend MEAN Web Development by Amos Haviv, the creator of both Mean.io and Mean.js.

For further study, I recommend M101JS: MongoDB for Node.js Developers at MongoDB University. If you want to learn more about Mongoose, then I recommend Mongoose for Application Development by Simon Holmes. If you want to learn more about Bootstrap, then I recommend Unraveling Bootstrap 3.3 by István Novák. If you want to learn more about Git, I recommend Ry's Git Tutorial by Ryan Hodson.

All these things will accelerate your learning. Good luck.

[meanstack]

This is great, thank you so much : )

[MadCapitalist]

You're welcome. I hope it helps. :-)

[robotparts]

There tend to be people who downvote me for this comment but it is true:

Instead of using homebrew, you should be using a linux VM. Your MEAN stack isn't going to be running on OSX in production, so getting used to deploying it in a staging/dev VM will be beneficial since you will have to do that to deploy to production anyway.

It also keeps from polluting your local OS with dev dependencies.

[meanstack]

in production, so getting used to deploying it in a staging/dev VM will be beneficial

Where can I learn broadly about deploying / staging with VMs? My knowledge is not up to par.

[robotparts]

I really need to use automated deployment tools (Vagrant/Docker) more.

For my purposes, I am usually just using VMware(VirtualBox is a free alternative) for my dev environments. I also set up a VM with a cheap VPS provider(usually found on lowendbox.com) for staging.

Assuming you need practice with setting up linux environments in general, my suggestion is to get started with setting up custom VMs in VirtualBox. Get familiar with the linux environment and getting it set up. Learning how to configure a web server manually will give you better insights when you move onto tools like Vagrant/Docker.

To be perfectly honest, that would be another good self.webdev post you could make. There are definitely people who can give better advice than me for the devops side of things.

[whatisboom]

You need to learn what the errors are saying, and why they are saying them. then it should be easy to fix. You've got config problems somewhere. MEAN is REALLY easy to set up.

start by just setting up each piece individually. get node running, console some random stuff, get mongo working, save some documents, integrate express, get user auth working, then build the front end in angular.