I am a better programmer right now than I was 5 hours ago. That’s because I spent my evening teaching people about programming.

Our Node.DC Meetup group has been interspersing the usual presentation-format meetups with some collaborative meetups. We’ve struggled with a name for these collaborative meetups. They used to be called “Office Hours” or “Hack Nights.” Now we’re calling them “Node Nights.” Whatever we call them, the idea is that these are occasions to work together on projects, socialize, learn from each other, and ultimately produce something. But another thing we do at these meetups is dedicate some attention to people who are new to Node and want to learn. I’ve made it my role at these meetups to help out these people who are brave and curious enough to come to a tech meetup to learn about programming. I get great personal satisfaction out of it. But I realized today that as much as I may be helping them, they are helping me, too.

Our announcements for Node Nights always make the point that all skill levels are welcome and that we will be helping people learn Node using the wonderful Nodeschool interactive workshops in Learn You Node. We generally only get through the first 4 or 5 workshops over the duration of the 3-hour meetup. Without fail, the thing that trips people up — blows their minds — is the first asynchronous I/O workshop.