What is nice about meteor is how quickly you can get off the ground and build something with it. Then you realize: I have no idea how this stuff works. Is it secure? When do things update? Is there too much magic?

But if you spend a bit of time learning how meteor’s core packages work (deps, ddp, livedata, blaze, etc) and how they work together — almost all of the apprehension disappears.

I recommend digging into the Deps package first, it powers reactivity and is surprisingly simple (only 1 kb).

EventedMind has great videos explaining reactivity and Deps https://www.eventedmind.com/classes/meteor-meteor-reactivity...

Meteor also started putting together a manual to explain the core concepts http://manual.meteor.com — the first chapter is about the Deps package.

With any new concept there is a learning curve. But I believe the concepts meteor introduce are too powerful to ignore. The saying is that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic :)