Typical analyst skill priority
1. SQL
2. Excel
3. A BI tool (Power BI / Tableau)
4. Python with pandas
5. Statistics basics
6. Domain knowledge
7. Optional extras: Node.js, Git, cloud basics
Learn Node.js when your team context makes it useful.

# Install a current Node.js LTS release, then:
node --version
mkdir analyst-scripts && cd analyst-scripts
npm init -y
# Node 18+ includes fetch, so simple API scripts need no extra packages

// fetch_users.mjs   run: node fetch_users.mjs
import { writeFileSync } from "node:fs";

const res = await fetch("https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users");
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`HTTP ${res.status}`);
const users = await res.json();

const q = (v) => `"${String(v).replaceAll('"', '""')}"`;
const rows = users.map(u => [u.id, u.name, u.email, u.address.city, u.company.name].map(q).join(","));
const csv = ["id,name,email,city,company", ...rows].join("\n");

writeFileSync("users.csv", csv);
console.log(`Wrote ${users.length} rows to users.csv`);

import pandas as pd, requests

r = requests.get("https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users", timeout=10)
r.raise_for_status()
df = pd.json_normalize(r.json())[["id", "name", "email", "address.city", "company.name"]]
df.to_csv("users.csv", index=False)
# If your team uses Python, this is simpler — choose by context

// npm install express
import express from "express";
import { readFileSync } from "node:fs";

const app = express();

app.get("/api/summary/cities", (req, res) => {
  const lines = readFileSync("users.csv", "utf8").trim().split("\n").slice(1);
  const counts = {};
  for (const line of lines) {
    const city = line.split(",")[3].replaceAll('"', "");
    counts[city] = (counts[city] || 0) + 1;
  }
  res.json(Object.entries(counts).map(([city, users]) => ({ city, users })));
});

app.listen(3001, () => console.log("http://localhost:3001/api/summary/cities"));
// simple CSV split for this demo; use a CSV parser for real data

# Linux/macOS cron: run every day at 07:00
0 7 * * * cd /home/analyst/analyst-scripts && /usr/bin/node fetch_users.mjs >> export.log 2>&1

# Windows: use Task Scheduler to run
# node C:\analyst-scripts\fetch_users.mjs

Node.js for analysts — focused plan
1. JavaScript basics: variables, arrays, objects, map/filter/reduce
2. async/await and fetch
3. Reading and writing files with node:fs
4. Environment variables for tokens
5. A small Express endpoint
6. Scheduling a script
Skip: frontend frameworks, bundlers, advanced server topics

Analyst Script Checklist
☐ Token read from environment variables, not code
☐ HTTP errors handled (check res.ok)
☐ Output includes run date
☐ Row count logged
☐ README explains how to run
☐ Approved by data owner if data is sensitive

Hand-off to engineering
Script: ______  Purpose: ______
Data source: ______  Owner: ______
Runs: daily at ____  Output: ______
Known limits: ______
Request: please review and host if needed