[austincheney]

Just start writing applications and dig into the API documentation. This is how I learned Node.

I will say having a background in systems programming and scripting for filesystems is hugely beneficial. I am just a pansy JavaScript developer, so I had to figure this all out to be better at writing Node apps.

I will also say current versions of Node are massively backwards compatible. Very little of old features have been deprecated or killed out. This is all spelled out in the API docs.

Perhaps the hardest part to learning Node is wrapping your mind around asychronous operations. Don't spend time with the synchronous methods if an asynchronous method is available.

[slowmotarget]

You're absolutely right about the backward compatibility. If you're still learning and not on a production server, no need to rush on the latest release.