The MEAN stack is a powerful, full-stack JavaScript solution that comprises four major building blocks: MongoDB as the database, Express as the web server framework, AngularJS as the web client framework, and Node.js as the server platform. These building blocks are being developed by different teams and involve a substantial community of developers and advocates pushing forward the development and documentation of each component. The main strength of the stack lies in its centralization of JavaScript as the main programming language. However, the problem of connecting these tools together can lay the foundation for scaling and architecture issues, which can dramatically affect your development process.

In this book, I will try to present the best practices and known issues of building a MEAN application, but before you begin with actual MEAN development, you will first need to set up your environment. This chapter will cover a bit of a programming overview but mostly present the proper ways of installing the basic perquisites of a MEAN application. By the end of this chapter, you'll learn how to install and configure MongoDB and Node.js on all the common operating systems and how to use Node's package manager. In this chapter, we're going to cover the following topics: