I'm just starting out in the world of development, and many of the projects I'm interested in exploring are written in Node.js. If you're an old hand at such things, you already know that which version of Node you use on a particular application is vitally important. (This is actually one of the reasons Docker is so amazingly amazing when it comes to deploying Node apps, but I digress.)

For folks like me, the version issue can be confusing and frustrating. Thankfully, I ran across a simple tool with a simple name: n. Once you have Node.js installed on your system, using n, it's possible to download and make active a very specific version of the program, so your specific application works properly. In fact, when I was installing the NOMP stratum server for Bitcoin mining recently, I had to use n to try more than a dozen versions before I found the one that worked as expected.

Node.js is a powerful, incredible language that is used by many smart developers. Those of us who are just getting started, however, are easily intimidated by version needs. If that describes you, or if you understand the nuances but just want a quick and easy way to manage it, check out n today. There are instructions on the Github page: https://github.com/tj/n.