Learning enough about Node.JS to use Ember-CLI

Hi folks,

I’m still quite new to Ember, coming from a Ruby / Rails (that is, backend) background. I guess I’m somewhat competent in frontend Javascript (as long as it has got nothing to do with design and visual effects), but I’ve never developed in Node.JS and so lack familiarity with a lot of concepts / tools used by Ember CLI.

It starts with basic things like “how do I actually output log statements or debug my code” (yes, I could google that) and goes on with “how not to become confused with different libraries being distributed differently, with different module systems and with different package managers and which ones to use” or “how could I even start to figure out how to debug an acceptance test (everything I read confused me and/or didn’t really work)?” or “I don’t like that my test output is cluttered with JSHint tests (it adds so much noise), but I would like to have it pointed out if something doesn’t pass JSHint, so how could I separate normal tests from JSHint tests” etc.

Can somebody suggest good resources to get started? I could try learning about each tool individually, but it still feels that I’m missing some fundamental things sometimes. Should I just learn Node.JS? I feel that it might be overkill if all I want to do is develop frontend code, but maybe that’s the (only) way to go?

Is this even an issue or should I just carry on, acquiring whatever is needed along the way? Maybe just read through the Broccoli and JsHint and whatever documentation? Currently, I feel that these issues are impacting my progress more than e.g. Ember itself.