I had the chance to participate to jsday in Verona early this year and I wanted to make a small summary to all of you that couldn't be there. I really liked Kitze's' idea to write about React Amsterdam conference he attended.
Unfortunately this summary can't be complete since there were 2 distinct tracks and I couldn't follow both of them at the same time but still, I hope this can be interesting for you anyway.
I'll add slides and videos links as soon as they are available.
##TL;DR The big topic was Functional reactive programming, or RxJs if you prefer. That seems like the big thing in javascript 2016.
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Recap from #jsday 2016 #functional #reactive #programming is the new black #javascript
— Daniele Bertella (@_denb) 12 maggio 2016
2 talks, a workshop and mentions in many talks, all about Functional reactive programming.
@shwetank, Opera developer, talked about Progressive web apps, probably the second big thing in javascript 2016. It was fun because I just attended another great conference at google Italia few days before the jsday on the exactly same topic. I was thinking PWA were a Google mostly-only thing but I was happy to realize other browsers thinking about it as a way to save the web against mobile native development.
How PWA can beat native?
Basically web offer: try before install model vs native that force you to install an app to try it.
Pretty much same capabilities and user engagement without even the needs of installing.
- Add to home screen
- Work offline
- Push notifications
- Plus the web's power: different urls, SEO, accessibility...
With PWA you let the user choose and that for @shwetank can be the key.
The topic was tempting but then after a short and interesting introduction from @mattpodwysocki people lost interest.
Everybody was following the exercise from the reactivex site, that I really encourage you to do, but I'd rather have done it at home than spenging my time there during the conference.
Not to criticise him or the organization but just to remind myself it may be better to focus on talks.
Anyway presentation's slide can be found here along with all the other assets and I encourage you to check them out.
@jakobmattsson gave a quick talk about javascript in general and what you can easily accomplish with function that you could have even forgotten. In javascript everything seems really simple, but still you can do great things.
He talked about 3 main topics:
- functional programming
- meta programming
- there is no class
Whenever you have a problem you can solve it with another function.
@jakobmattsson discuss about apply, call, clojures, eval. Topics that (almost) every js developer has doubt about.
He concluded with a useful explanation on ES6 or coffeescript classes syntactic sugar that you may not need if you first fully understand Object.create.
Spoiler alert, @lucamezzalira didn't talk about react at all! At the end he talked about cycle.js but it was a good excursus about RxJs.
You have to start learning a few concepts to understand reactive programming, like streams, cold and hot observables and operators.
If you are using a Flux implementation for your front end architecture or even worst MVC / MVVM / MV* pattern, you are living in the past! Say hello to MVI aka Model View Intent.
I'm personally quite happy with Redux for now but I think you need at least to know what's going on around you.
The conclusion was that Functional Reactive programming isn't always the best thing to do but for sure it's great when you need to fetch lots of data and react. You can find slides here.
@Rumyra did the most pleasant talk of the day, with music and visual, it was party time already!
Apparently she's VJing around projecting visual animations on buildings along with music. I'd love to see her live. Unfortunately she haven't had the chance to do it during the party in Verona, but maybe next year 😀.
She talked about the newest web APIs such as animation, audio, strem and midi. I encourage you to have check her github account. It's not that easy to find samples but you can have an idea about her projects.
She showed us a demo with voice control using a microphone and then another mixing music, video and visual animation.
Last she ended up showing her handmade bag with a mac and her "mini" MIDI controller inside that she's using for VJing.