[viscanti]

Well, complete beginners probably aren't using much of the API, and the parts they would be using have been relatively stable for a while now. The node development team has done a pretty good job of indicating when apis will be deprecated or changed, and are even helping make it easy to find the places where code needs to be changed/updated (helpful if you're using a module that isn't being maintained).

That said, most of the most popular modules are actively updated, and their APIs rarely change. The 0.6.x branch brought some backwards breaking changes, but overall it doesn't seem to be a significant amount of work to update.

The platform isn't moving THAT fast that it's tough to keep up with.