I had a chance to attend one of the Angular.js meetups. Google hosts the meetup in its New York Chelsea market office. This time it was a hack night, few googlers were there, some other smart people. We broke into few groups and were discussing various things (protractor.js, mean stack, node.js and angular bugs in general).

I was surprised how many people were interested in MEAN (MongoDB, Express.js, Angular.js, Node.js) stack, which is full stack written 100% in JavaScript. There are several options for seed project (framework you can use as a starting point for your project). Since it’s very convenient to use seed project instead of installing all required components separately. There are a few good options available at this time, I’m sure we’ll see a lot more in the next year or two.

Seems like the most popular option for MEAN stack is mean.io project. It’s very appealing because it’s backed by both huge community (almost 5K stars on Github) and a company Linnovate (who also provides commercial support). When I tried it, it wasn’t what I expected, something wasn’t the way I used to write web application, and there is nothing wrong with that as every developer has its own style.

So, after some research I found Yeoman full stack generator, which is fork of standard Yeoman project. Since I’m using Yeoman on the regular basis and I’m familiar with how app is structured and the way it works, for me it was familiar environment and I liked it much better. Currently I’m developing small prototype (forum/classified app), just to play with full stack Angular.js app and hack things together as a proof of concept and personal experience. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to share the results. My setup will be as usual, Ubuntu 14 on Digital Ocean.

Please, share your experience with MEAN stack and what you prefer to use as a seed for your project. I’m curious what’s popular out there and what’s working in production, not just concepts.

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Source: Alex Bachuk