What do companies like LinkedIn, Dow Jones, The New York Times, Uber, Microsoft, eBay, and PayPal have in common? They all incorporate Node.js in their technology stack to build everything from websites to real-time mobile applications. 

What's the appeal of Node.js? Well, as Carnegie Mellon's Constantine Aaron Cois explains it, "With Node.js, you can build complex applications that can scale to millions of client connections because the application handling client requests is passing off all of the time-intensive work of managing I/O and computation to the event loop."

If you've been hearing a lot about Node.js and wanted to try it out, or if you're working in an environment where Node.js is in use and wanted to get in on the action, we've created a short (60 minute) intro course for you. It's free; it's online; and it's called "Introducing Node.js." 

As a way of demonstrating the benefits of Node.js, the course walks you through the creation of a "social profile" form using the technology. To get a sense of how hands-on the lesson is, check out the excerpt below. But if you've already heard enough, simply enroll and get started!