The spirit of JSConf lives in Iceland! Conversations with new and old friends, two great tracks, wonderful social events, diversity, significant other track, an inspiring venue, local and global sponsors and the friendly organizers from Iceland. JSConfis had it all. The Williams family who started JSConf US, the crew from JSConfeu and all other JSConf organizers would approve. The JSConfis team and the local JavaScript community should be very proud of faithfully carrying on the JSConf tradition with a strong Icelandic flavor.
Iceland has a strong place in JSConf history. The second JSConf in the US was disrupted by the 2011 volcano the exploded behind a nearby Icelandic farm. Most airline flights between Europe and the US were cancelled for a week. Several speakers were stranded in the US and one speaker could not make it. This created an opportunity for Jed Schmidt to give an excellent, humous presentation and so a JSConf star was born. Over the years Jed has given back to the community with more talks at JSConf and helping to create one of the strongest local JSConf meetups in Brooklyn, New York. Brooklyn has now given back to Iceland as several of the speakers are Brooklyn alumni.
JSConfis also benefited from the JSConfeu. Many of the JSConfeu team were in attendance. They were mentors and two spoke. Only the JSConfis organizers can tell the full story of all the assistance. But as an example, I found out about JSConfis from a JSConfeu announcement.
Why did I attend JSConfis? I've been fortunate to have attend all eight JSConfus. I've also attended one JSConfeu. With JSConfus cancelled, I had planned to attend JSConfeu this year. However, when that too was cancelled for this year, I followed Jan's recommendation and bought a ticket for JSConfis. I'm so glad that I did because I was once again inspired by JSConf.
JavaScript is a creative tool. An obvious example was Amy Cheng's "Recreate Masterpiece of Modern Art with JavaScript". She recreated Damien Hirst’s Spot paintings and one of Piet Mondrian’s Composition paintings. I hope to take her work and port it to screens in my living room.
Another example was Mariko Kosak's presentation on "Making a Robot Eye with JavaScript - or Magic of Computer Vision Unraveled". With grace and ease she conveyed this very technical and mathematical topic in simple terms and ended with a great demo.
The JavaScript community also cares about people. The first keynote talk by Myles Borins - "On left-pad and empathy: understanding human connection" set the tone. (I was not able to attend Berglind Ósk Bergsdóttir's "Feeling like a fake - the Impostor Syndrome".) Jan Lehnardt presented an emotional talk on "The state of the JavaScript Community". As a leader in both Open Source and the JSConf community, he poured his heart and soul into this talk and raised serious questions for every developer around the world to consider. Hopefully it will become a Smashing Magazine article soon.
Speaking of Smashing, Vitaly Friedman's session on "Dirty little front-end tricks" amazed even the CSS experts with surprising details from the specs and creative hacks. Similarly, Malte Ubl, lead developer for Google's AMP project, in "#notalljavascript" made his audience look at the details and dark side of third party JavaScript that we use for social media, ads, comments and other purposes. It is worse than you think.
JSConfs provide a way to gauge community trends. React, which was introduced at JSConfus in 2013, has a major role. "Pivoting to React, at scale" by Tilde Ann Thurium provided hard numbers on improvements from using React. I complemented her on how her presentation scaled down from her 160 person shop to my one man shop. There were several other react talks which I could not attend. Simultaneously, in Salt Lake City, Utah, US, my friend Kevin Old was speaking at React Rally. So no doubt, I should study up on React - which I've said before.
Speaking of entertaining, with two musical interludes Visnu Pitiyanuvath talked and sang about "HSL: The RGB You've Been Waiting For." He convinced me. Liv Erickson's keynote on "Why you should care about the VR Web - and how to build it!" was convincing because of her personal passion for the technology. Perhaps it needs to be tempered by the "Laws of Media", but I will definitely explore this. David Khourshid convinced me in "Reactive Animations with CSS Variables" that I need to know CSS variables.
Finally, in a well researched talk Jenna Zeigen showed "How Your Brain is Conspiring Against You Making Good Software." I've already recommend this to a non-JavaScript person as very useful to anyone on a work team. The topic deserves wide distribution and perhaps an interactive version.
Not all the talks are covered above. Often it was a coin flip as to which track to attend which attests to the high quality of the conference. For example, I missed the talk by Azat Mardan who is also from Virginia in the US.
Again, the entire JSConf community should be proud of the team behind JSConfis. Thanks to everyone who made the conference possible and provided a great experience for me and my family. Congratulations on creating a great JSConf.
[Note: I'll come back to this post when I return home and add links to videos and presentations.]
PS Our family spent a week prior to the conference touring Iceland. Wow! It is beautiful and exceptional. This just enhanced our enjoyment of JSConfis.
Showing posts with label jsconf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jsconf. Show all posts
Saturday, August 27, 2016
Sunday, December 06, 2015
Reflection on 7 Years of JSConf
JSConf.us has been a wonderful event with great talks for seven years. I thought I’d share some of my favorites. Other people will have other favorites and this should not be considered a best of list.
2009 - Looking back at the first JSConf one must marvel at the talks and the atmosphere. Magical describes about half of it. These are the talks that still influence me:
Chris Anderson and Jan Lehnardt’s CouchDB to the Edge was funny and mind-blowing. I’m still a huge couchdb fan. James Duncan’s The Smart Platform. A JavaScript P.a.a.S had these great images of generators in factories and related the rise of electric power plant to the coming demise of in-house data centers. AWS must have watched this video. PhoneGap - Brian crushed this talk and continued to be a presence at JSConf every year. And calls for more bacon.
I had a very small part at the end when I presented Chris Williams with some beers brewed in the year JavaScript was invented.
2010 - Again in DC with some of the better known JavaScript presenters like Brendan Eich, the inventor of JS, and Douglas Crockford who discovered JSON. Brendan sat at the table with me and the rest of the YayQuery group. Their influence on JSConf and JavaScript had been remarkable (see next year). Noted that everyone at the table had Macs and took a picture - which is lost. Also, this was one of the first US talks about node.js which had just introduced at JSConf.eu. Talks I remember vividly were:
YayQuery’s Lunch Spectacular. Ryan Dahl on Less is More in Node.js. Dmitry Baranovskiy on Raphaël the Great which showed me that JS has no limits. And Steve Souders on performance.
2011 - Okay west coasters, JSConf is now closer in the beautiful city of Portland OR - and bigger and with more bacon. Then pinball. This is the year that the quality of the B Track really started to improve where the YayQuery speakers rules. Alex Sexton spoke on Uselessware. Rebecca Murphey’s Modern JavaScript was a great talk. And Paul Irish on Going Steady with the Chrome Dev Tools and he has since taken his expertise to YouTube fame. Yay!
Mary Rose Cook’s Fakery, AI, Collision Detection, a 2D Platform Shooter in JS may not hold up with time but I thought it was a great moment. I also liked Ben Combee’s talk on Enyo, an early framework which I enjoyed.
2012 - Now in warm Arizona with a great pool so my family came along. Jake Archibald’s Application Cache is a Douchebag was a stunning title and he just kept me on the edge of my seat. And lastly, Chris Williams and Avni Khatri discussed Diversity In Computing. A topic we are still dealing with and having more successes every year.
2013 - First year in Florida for JSConf.us with CSSConf was the day before. Nicole Sullivan’s For The Love of Style Guides introduced me to the concept of a living style guide. Raquel Vèlez talk on AI.js showed the advantages of using JS for non-trivial robots. And Angelina Fabbro’s JavaScript Masterclass deserves to be the most popular video. And of course my talk on JavaScript Journalism that got quite a reaction from the journalists when the video was released.
2014 - Kawandeep Verde’s Open Web Art showed that JS really could be used for art. Yet another way to be creative or express oneself. Jenn Schiffer’s What the Harm In Sorting was hilarious. The talk that had the most impact on me was Patrick Hamann’s was CSS and the Critical Path given at CSSConf. He proved a concept I’ve argued for embedding CSS and JS in the HTML page for performance.
2015 - Mariko Kosaka’s Knitting for Javascripters was a completely unexpected talk and great on many levels. Also, Tracy Hinds’ Re-examing Recipe Search was a walk down a familiar path for me.
[Update expected with links to videos and later about LastCall.]
2009 - Looking back at the first JSConf one must marvel at the talks and the atmosphere. Magical describes about half of it. These are the talks that still influence me:
Chris Anderson and Jan Lehnardt’s CouchDB to the Edge was funny and mind-blowing. I’m still a huge couchdb fan. James Duncan’s The Smart Platform. A JavaScript P.a.a.S had these great images of generators in factories and related the rise of electric power plant to the coming demise of in-house data centers. AWS must have watched this video. PhoneGap - Brian crushed this talk and continued to be a presence at JSConf every year. And calls for more bacon.
I had a very small part at the end when I presented Chris Williams with some beers brewed in the year JavaScript was invented.
2010 - Again in DC with some of the better known JavaScript presenters like Brendan Eich, the inventor of JS, and Douglas Crockford who discovered JSON. Brendan sat at the table with me and the rest of the YayQuery group. Their influence on JSConf and JavaScript had been remarkable (see next year). Noted that everyone at the table had Macs and took a picture - which is lost. Also, this was one of the first US talks about node.js which had just introduced at JSConf.eu. Talks I remember vividly were:
YayQuery’s Lunch Spectacular. Ryan Dahl on Less is More in Node.js. Dmitry Baranovskiy on Raphaël the Great which showed me that JS has no limits. And Steve Souders on performance.
2011 - Okay west coasters, JSConf is now closer in the beautiful city of Portland OR - and bigger and with more bacon. Then pinball. This is the year that the quality of the B Track really started to improve where the YayQuery speakers rules. Alex Sexton spoke on Uselessware. Rebecca Murphey’s Modern JavaScript was a great talk. And Paul Irish on Going Steady with the Chrome Dev Tools and he has since taken his expertise to YouTube fame. Yay!
Mary Rose Cook’s Fakery, AI, Collision Detection, a 2D Platform Shooter in JS may not hold up with time but I thought it was a great moment. I also liked Ben Combee’s talk on Enyo, an early framework which I enjoyed.
2012 - Now in warm Arizona with a great pool so my family came along. Jake Archibald’s Application Cache is a Douchebag was a stunning title and he just kept me on the edge of my seat. And lastly, Chris Williams and Avni Khatri discussed Diversity In Computing. A topic we are still dealing with and having more successes every year.
2013 - First year in Florida for JSConf.us with CSSConf was the day before. Nicole Sullivan’s For The Love of Style Guides introduced me to the concept of a living style guide. Raquel Vèlez talk on AI.js showed the advantages of using JS for non-trivial robots. And Angelina Fabbro’s JavaScript Masterclass deserves to be the most popular video. And of course my talk on JavaScript Journalism that got quite a reaction from the journalists when the video was released.
2014 - Kawandeep Verde’s Open Web Art showed that JS really could be used for art. Yet another way to be creative or express oneself. Jenn Schiffer’s What the Harm In Sorting was hilarious. The talk that had the most impact on me was Patrick Hamann’s was CSS and the Critical Path given at CSSConf. He proved a concept I’ve argued for embedding CSS and JS in the HTML page for performance.
2015 - Mariko Kosaka’s Knitting for Javascripters was a completely unexpected talk and great on many levels. Also, Tracy Hinds’ Re-examing Recipe Search was a walk down a familiar path for me.
[Update expected with links to videos and later about LastCall.]
Wednesday, June 05, 2013
JSConf 2013 in Review
JSConf, as several others agree, is a great and important conference. It keeps getting better each of the last five years. This post focuses on this year's presentations and the cumulative effect of the talks. When possible, I'll link to the slide deck. (Videos will come in a few months.) There were too many to review them all.
First, the Web is the platform. JavaScript is the VM. Brendan Eich in his talk, JavaScript Is 18, showed the game "Unreal Tournament" running in the browser without a plugin. Written in C++, the target was ASM.js. Everything will be either written in JavaScript or compiled (built) to JavaScript. Yes, everything! His slides do a nice job of showing how the web stack has grown.
This is not saying that JavaScript replaces C++. As Brendan pointed out, ASM.js is not meant to be hand coded but a target. So if I was writing in another language, I'd want to make sure it could be "compiled" to JavaScript or I'd write it in JavaScript. Note, two days prior he gave the same talk at Fluent which is available on video. "Always bet on JS."
Second, because a build phase is now fairly common JavaScript and CSS are intertwined. For example, you can tweak you JS for performance, but you still have to be concerned with the performance of your CSS. Nicole Sullivan's Creating Living Style Guide reinforced this. She provided hard numbers (60% faster to first byte and 11% increase in page views) for refactoring an existing site's CSS. She suggested using Grep, CSSLint or CSSCSS to look for duplicates. Other talks like Adobe's TopCoat and Rebecca Murphey's Optimizing for Developer Delight (in her "Build Everything" section) also emphasized this.
Third, there is math. College level stuff like linear algebra and matrix manipulations. Raquel Velez @rockbot rocked the house with her talk AI.js: Robots with Brains. She is now a contributor to the Johnny-Five library for Arduinos and was a leader for the NodeBots day. One of the talks that generated the most buzz during JSConf was Making WebGL Dance by Steven Wittens. I'm just starting to go through the slides because I was in track B during this talk. (jdalton's performance talk also got buzz.)
Fourth, responsive design took some serious hits. For most people it means one code base using media queries to use different parts of the css or js to produce different layouts. Brian Leroux who is working on Topcoat at Adobe emphasized we may never be at the point that serving one set of files provides the best experience. Adobe open sourced their research. Topcoat has desktop and mobile versions. In DOMkata: The Dark Art of Mobile Web during CSSConf Mike Stamm, WSJ mobile web lead, showed the difficulties determining just browser width.
Angelina Fabbro presented JavaScript Masterclass: How you you go from being a good developer, to a great one? This was one of my favorite talks. I've recently started considering myself a below average JavaScript coder because about 50% of us are. It provides a new perspective. One of the reason's I attend hackaton's is to see how I am doing. She created nice checklists that are useful to figure out how you want to grow as a coder.
Boom! Promises/A+ Was Born: The story of Promises/A+ told by Domenic Denicola was inspiring (liveblog). It was an interesting analysis of the JavaScript community because it shows how to get things done starting as one person. His checklist on "What made the Promises/A+ effort work so well" is a step by step guide for anyone. I especially like how the testing was such a key part.
Angus Croll added seven more authors to his previous literary figures writing JavaScript. Hilarious presentation that forces you to examine one's own writing style.
yayQuery's appearance at JSConf was LOL for nearly a full 30 minutes. Showed Best of Video. Hilarious. In 2010 I had at the pleasure to sit at the same table as them along with Brendan Eich. As I said then, "Clearly the next generation of javascript and funny." Rebecca Murphy, Paul Irish, Adam Sontag and Alex Sexton all continue to make significant contributions to the JavaScript community.
The day between the talks harkened back to the first JSConfs where the same people sat together all day. This year I was at a table was in the NodeBot event. Every participant (attendee) at JSConf receive an Arduino. Our team built a robot arm that typed "helloworld.js" (second video). My teammates deserve most of the credit: Bryan Hughes, Mike Surowiec and Rahul Ravikumar. Every reason to believe that they will have as much success as my yayQuery tablemates have had. Revived memories of my electrical engineering and breadboarding days. Thanks to Rick Waldron, Raquel Velez, Sarah Chipps and other for leading this.
Other talks were also significant. I missed most of the Track B talks. Also missed several of the CSSConf talks. And a few of the talks were so code heavy that I'll have to sit with the presentations to really understand them like Master the CLI with Node and schema liberation with json and plv8. Thanks to all the presenters who took great efforts to make a presentation.
Finally, thanks to all the people with kind words for my talk on JavaScript Journalism, The New Profession: Simeon Willbanks, Kevin Old, Kevin Lamping, Mark Gayler, Trevor Landau, Francesco Rizzi, Roger Raymond and many, many others including my Dad. I apologize for not mentioning others by name. It was an honor be in Track A and thrilling to present a unique perspective on JavaScript.
I am seriously considering leading a JS Journalism Conf in fall 2013. Let me know if you are interested.
Other diaries and comments:
James Long
JSConf Storify by Azat
EndPoints Blog
Bryan Hughes Day 1 (with nice comment on my talk), Day 2 (about our robot), Day 3
You Should Speak At JSConf
My other JSConf posts since 2010.
First, the Web is the platform. JavaScript is the VM. Brendan Eich in his talk, JavaScript Is 18, showed the game "Unreal Tournament" running in the browser without a plugin. Written in C++, the target was ASM.js. Everything will be either written in JavaScript or compiled (built) to JavaScript. Yes, everything! His slides do a nice job of showing how the web stack has grown.
This is not saying that JavaScript replaces C++. As Brendan pointed out, ASM.js is not meant to be hand coded but a target. So if I was writing in another language, I'd want to make sure it could be "compiled" to JavaScript or I'd write it in JavaScript. Note, two days prior he gave the same talk at Fluent which is available on video. "Always bet on JS."
Second, because a build phase is now fairly common JavaScript and CSS are intertwined. For example, you can tweak you JS for performance, but you still have to be concerned with the performance of your CSS. Nicole Sullivan's Creating Living Style Guide reinforced this. She provided hard numbers (60% faster to first byte and 11% increase in page views) for refactoring an existing site's CSS. She suggested using Grep, CSSLint or CSSCSS to look for duplicates. Other talks like Adobe's TopCoat and Rebecca Murphey's Optimizing for Developer Delight (in her "Build Everything" section) also emphasized this.
Third, there is math. College level stuff like linear algebra and matrix manipulations. Raquel Velez @rockbot rocked the house with her talk AI.js: Robots with Brains. She is now a contributor to the Johnny-Five library for Arduinos and was a leader for the NodeBots day. One of the talks that generated the most buzz during JSConf was Making WebGL Dance by Steven Wittens. I'm just starting to go through the slides because I was in track B during this talk. (jdalton's performance talk also got buzz.)
Fourth, responsive design took some serious hits. For most people it means one code base using media queries to use different parts of the css or js to produce different layouts. Brian Leroux who is working on Topcoat at Adobe emphasized we may never be at the point that serving one set of files provides the best experience. Adobe open sourced their research. Topcoat has desktop and mobile versions. In DOMkata: The Dark Art of Mobile Web during CSSConf Mike Stamm, WSJ mobile web lead, showed the difficulties determining just browser width.
Angelina Fabbro presented JavaScript Masterclass: How you you go from being a good developer, to a great one? This was one of my favorite talks. I've recently started considering myself a below average JavaScript coder because about 50% of us are. It provides a new perspective. One of the reason's I attend hackaton's is to see how I am doing. She created nice checklists that are useful to figure out how you want to grow as a coder.
Angus Croll added seven more authors to his previous literary figures writing JavaScript. Hilarious presentation that forces you to examine one's own writing style.
yayQuery's appearance at JSConf was LOL for nearly a full 30 minutes. Showed Best of Video. Hilarious. In 2010 I had at the pleasure to sit at the same table as them along with Brendan Eich. As I said then, "Clearly the next generation of javascript and funny." Rebecca Murphy, Paul Irish, Adam Sontag and Alex Sexton all continue to make significant contributions to the JavaScript community.
The day between the talks harkened back to the first JSConfs where the same people sat together all day. This year I was at a table was in the NodeBot event. Every participant (attendee) at JSConf receive an Arduino. Our team built a robot arm that typed "helloworld.js" (second video). My teammates deserve most of the credit: Bryan Hughes, Mike Surowiec and Rahul Ravikumar. Every reason to believe that they will have as much success as my yayQuery tablemates have had. Revived memories of my electrical engineering and breadboarding days. Thanks to Rick Waldron, Raquel Velez, Sarah Chipps and other for leading this.
Other talks were also significant. I missed most of the Track B talks. Also missed several of the CSSConf talks. And a few of the talks were so code heavy that I'll have to sit with the presentations to really understand them like Master the CLI with Node and schema liberation with json and plv8. Thanks to all the presenters who took great efforts to make a presentation.
Finally, thanks to all the people with kind words for my talk on JavaScript Journalism, The New Profession: Simeon Willbanks, Kevin Old, Kevin Lamping, Mark Gayler, Trevor Landau, Francesco Rizzi, Roger Raymond and many, many others including my Dad. I apologize for not mentioning others by name. It was an honor be in Track A and thrilling to present a unique perspective on JavaScript.
I am seriously considering leading a JS Journalism Conf in fall 2013. Let me know if you are interested.
Other diaries and comments:
James Long
JSConf Storify by Azat
EndPoints Blog
Bryan Hughes Day 1 (with nice comment on my talk), Day 2 (about our robot), Day 3
You Should Speak At JSConf
My other JSConf posts since 2010.
Monday, June 03, 2013
ToDo After JSConf 2013
After every JSConf I have created a list of things I want to learn. For example, in 2010 nodejs topped the list. Once again this year the list is public:
- three.js
- BEM naming convention
- WebRTC - see Remy Sharp
- Casper.js, spooky.js and schoolbus.js for node - if good enough for jeb
- vektor.js - for robots
- asm.js - actual docs, not articles
- topcoat.io
- csscss
- creative.js
- more grunt
Friday, May 31, 2013
JSConf Differences Since 2009
JSConf 2013 is the fifth annual event. Here are 5 differences that I've noticed since then.
- Less need for power strips. Everyone has Macs with good batteries.
- More diversity. Keeps improving.
- JS Everywhere continues. Almost only JS on browser 5 years ago. No robots, etc.
- Track B room is bigger than the entire room for 2009.
- More people have JS jobs.
What has not changed is the humor of yayQuery, quality of the speakers or excellence of the Williams and volunteers.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
JavaScript Journalism Examples
Examples of JavaScript Journalism from my presentation at JSConf 2013 are now on http://jsjournalism.com. These examples are from around the United States and one from France. The presentation will be there later today (5/29).
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
JSConf 2013 Speaker: JavaScript Journalism
I'm honored to be accepted as a speaker at JSConf 2013. I'll be speaking on JavaScript Journalism.
It is time that news stories told with JavaScript get recognized as a form of journalism. It took years for photo journalism to get the recognition it deserves, now is the time to recognize JS Journalism.
Most news organizations presented election news using JavaScript. News home pages often have more JS than text.
A bit of history. A bit of academia. A bit of current news. A few guesses about the future. But nothing about the future of newspapers.UPDATE: Here is the slide deck and examples.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
TXJS Presentations Remotely
I've never been able to attend a TXJS conference so I've admired the event from afar. It looks like Rebecca Murphey and Alex Sexton hosted another grand event. Here are some great presentations.
Pamela Fox @pamelafox did a presentation on "localStorage: Use It, Don't Abuse It" that is very well documented and a great resource on local storage. The link to Steve Souders case study on Google and Bing is one example that I really appreciated.
http://localstorage-use-not-abuse.appspot.com/
http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2011/03/28/storager-case-study-bing-google/
Rebecca Murphey @rmurphey presented "A New Baseline for Front-End Developers" which which really helps me know where I should be pushing my limits. For example, I really want to automate a lot of my developement/deployment and it reminded me to study Grunt which was on my todo list from jsconf.
http://frontend-dev-baseline.nodejitsu.com/
"Machine Learning in JavaScript" would not have crossed my mind prior to seeing this presentation by Heather Arthur @harthvader. Perhaps I should be spending a hour per day on node again.
http://harthur.github.com/txjs-slides
Ashley @ClassicallyGeek did a wrap up of TXJS which mentioned a talk by Dave Rupert @davatron5000 on "JavaScript in Responsive Web Design". The fitvids.js jQuery plugin looks very interesting.
http://classicallygeek.com/2012/06/14/txjs-2012/
Finally, I'm looking forward to seeing Jed Schmidt's @jedschmidt presentation on "NPM: Node's Personal Manservant". He always has a interesting way of looking at things so I want to see his latest thinking.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tr4nslator/7187168459/in/set-72157630065908247
All the videos from last year are here. Maybe the 2012 ones will be there soon.
http://vimeo.com/channels/txjs
Saturday, April 07, 2012
JavaScript Community is Real and Growing
Several people have poked at the phrase "JavaScript Community" since JSConf 2012. David Flanagan has said that "it is too big to be a community." Ryan Funduk has said there is a "Culture of Exclusion". There have been lots of tweets and comments. I strongly disagree with both views.
There is a JavaScript community. Fact. There are people working together on JavaScript projects and that makes a community. No matter what you say or try to do, people working together form a community. Recognizing that there is a community is healthy and trying to deny it is harmful in my opinion.
If we did not talk about the community it would certainly be exclusionary. Only by recognizing the community can we make it better and inclusive. Discussion of -isms are welcomed. Talking about the role of alcohol is appropriate. Debates about events are healthy.
Rebecca Murphey, Marco Rogers, Tim Caswel (in comment to David Falanagan) have already pointed out that a community does not necessarily mean that everyone has the same beliefs. In fact, accepting divergent beliefs in a community are a strength. For example, my strong pro-union views certainly are different than most, but I feel quite comfortable discussing them with anyone at a community event. Divergent views is one reasons I join a community.
None of this introspection should overshadow the tremendous good that the JavaScript community can do and has done. For example, JSConf.eu has strongly promoted Coder Dojo with attention and money to help kids around the world. I look at the great careers that the yayQuery group and others have been able to build with the support of the community. Personally, I've made many new friends thanks to JSConf and have professionally gained. The positives are overwhelming.
When this community started it was very small. In many ways the first JSConf and JSConf.eu started the community. JSConf started inclusive of world, but only a few hundred people were interested in participating.
Today the JavaScript community is huge. With that growth come growing pains. How do we be more inclusive? How can events scale? How do the norms change for a larger community? What are the values? Other communities have faced similar problems. The JavaScript community is very receptive to finding answers to these and other questions. We should be thankful of that value.
Also defending the community is proof that we have a community.
Finally, a community is what you give to it. If you don't contribute it is hard to get anything out of it. So please contribute in ways that are appropriate for you. Let's do even more good.
There is a JavaScript community. Fact. There are people working together on JavaScript projects and that makes a community. No matter what you say or try to do, people working together form a community. Recognizing that there is a community is healthy and trying to deny it is harmful in my opinion.
If we did not talk about the community it would certainly be exclusionary. Only by recognizing the community can we make it better and inclusive. Discussion of -isms are welcomed. Talking about the role of alcohol is appropriate. Debates about events are healthy.
Rebecca Murphey, Marco Rogers, Tim Caswel (in comment to David Falanagan) have already pointed out that a community does not necessarily mean that everyone has the same beliefs. In fact, accepting divergent beliefs in a community are a strength. For example, my strong pro-union views certainly are different than most, but I feel quite comfortable discussing them with anyone at a community event. Divergent views is one reasons I join a community.
None of this introspection should overshadow the tremendous good that the JavaScript community can do and has done. For example, JSConf.eu has strongly promoted Coder Dojo with attention and money to help kids around the world. I look at the great careers that the yayQuery group and others have been able to build with the support of the community. Personally, I've made many new friends thanks to JSConf and have professionally gained. The positives are overwhelming.
When this community started it was very small. In many ways the first JSConf and JSConf.eu started the community. JSConf started inclusive of world, but only a few hundred people were interested in participating.
Today the JavaScript community is huge. With that growth come growing pains. How do we be more inclusive? How can events scale? How do the norms change for a larger community? What are the values? Other communities have faced similar problems. The JavaScript community is very receptive to finding answers to these and other questions. We should be thankful of that value.
Also defending the community is proof that we have a community.
Finally, a community is what you give to it. If you don't contribute it is hard to get anything out of it. So please contribute in ways that are appropriate for you. Let's do even more good.
Monday, September 19, 2011
CapitolJS 2011 [#JSConf East and #capjs]
One attends a JavaScript conference to learn how to use the language better. The conference is not intended to teach the beginner. There are assumptions of a working knowledge of the language, probably extensive experience in coding and an interest in node.js. However, I think there were themes or lessons in the presentations at this conference that would help any JavaScript developer.
The future of the language is amazingly bright. Mike Taylor showed that even though the browser Navigator has very unreliable properties that the future new properties (e.g., online, geolocation, etc.) hold great promise. Pamela Fox had example after example of APIs that JavaScript can access for functionality, public data and user data. And Brendan Eich demonstrated the work that Intel has done to access parallel-processing power with an engine called RiverTrail (on github) [Infoworld article][http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/intel-river-trail-adds-parallel-dimension-javascript-173347].
Performance in JavaScript is now in the hands of developers now. Nickolas Zakas promoted the use of both defer and async for script loading. So testing must include performance testing with no action taking longer than 100ms. This is the max for a responsive system. Alex Seston also emphasised the need for non-blocking code while on the topic of third party JS. Alex Russel went deep into working web engines in browsers so coders know what is behind some simple DOM changes.
JS, the programming language of the web, is amazingly rich. Douglas Crockford looked at how we code from the viewpoint of Head and Gut (see book Science of Fear) and how the Gut often gets in the way. Using tools and the good parts of the language (language subsetting) we can use our Head more and produce less errors. "Programming requires more precision than writing in English." Language conventions take time. For example the line breaks and spacing introduced by Medieval manuscript copyists. This language history perspective was echoed in Mike Taylor's talk and emphasized by Brendan Eich in noting how young the language is. It is mindblowing what the JS community can code in 140 bytes on Jed Schmidt's site (http://140byt.es.com).
Growth is in mobile and it effects all. Rebecca Murphey showed the new toura mulberry framework for creating content rich mobile apps built atop phonegap. http://toura.github.com/mulberry/ Joe McCann works in the mobile area and provided a comprehensive view of both coding and using node.js with Express, Stylus, Smoosh, and Commander as tools for creating any app. it is clear for the Head to win over Gut that automating tools are needed.
Node.js is still growing. Mikeal Rodgers ran down the most popular packages for node including npm, optimist, request and of course socket.io. But there is still room for improvement, especially in debugging. And again, node was mentioned by most presenters. Ben Combee showed how to access the node running in webOS and stated that webOS will soon be updated to version 0.4.11. Paolo Fraqomeni talked about how the design of node is especially suited for the enterprise and the event emitter.
As I see them available, I'll link to the decks for each presentation.
Douglas Crockford
Ben Combee
Nicholaz Zakas
Mikael Rogers
Jed Schmidt
Mike Taylor UPDATED
Rebecca Murphey
Alex Sexton
Alex Russell
Joe McCann
Paolo Fragomeni
Pamela Fox
Brendan Eich UPDATED
The conference was terrific not only because of the speakers but thanks to the work of my friends Laura and Chris Williams. Also because of sponsors there was time to network at parties both before and after the event.
Thanks. A wonderful community.
UPDATE: Group Photo
The future of the language is amazingly bright. Mike Taylor showed that even though the browser Navigator has very unreliable properties that the future new properties (e.g., online, geolocation, etc.) hold great promise. Pamela Fox had example after example of APIs that JavaScript can access for functionality, public data and user data. And Brendan Eich demonstrated the work that Intel has done to access parallel-processing power with an engine called RiverTrail (on github) [Infoworld article][http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/intel-river-trail-adds-parallel-dimension-javascript-173347].
Performance in JavaScript is now in the hands of developers now. Nickolas Zakas promoted the use of both defer and async for script loading. So testing must include performance testing with no action taking longer than 100ms. This is the max for a responsive system. Alex Seston also emphasised the need for non-blocking code while on the topic of third party JS. Alex Russel went deep into working web engines in browsers so coders know what is behind some simple DOM changes.
JS, the programming language of the web, is amazingly rich. Douglas Crockford looked at how we code from the viewpoint of Head and Gut (see book Science of Fear) and how the Gut often gets in the way. Using tools and the good parts of the language (language subsetting) we can use our Head more and produce less errors. "Programming requires more precision than writing in English." Language conventions take time. For example the line breaks and spacing introduced by Medieval manuscript copyists. This language history perspective was echoed in Mike Taylor's talk and emphasized by Brendan Eich in noting how young the language is. It is mindblowing what the JS community can code in 140 bytes on Jed Schmidt's site (http://140byt.es.com).
Growth is in mobile and it effects all. Rebecca Murphey showed the new toura mulberry framework for creating content rich mobile apps built atop phonegap. http://toura.github.com/mulberry/ Joe McCann works in the mobile area and provided a comprehensive view of both coding and using node.js with Express, Stylus, Smoosh, and Commander as tools for creating any app. it is clear for the Head to win over Gut that automating tools are needed.
Node.js is still growing. Mikeal Rodgers ran down the most popular packages for node including npm, optimist, request and of course socket.io. But there is still room for improvement, especially in debugging. And again, node was mentioned by most presenters. Ben Combee showed how to access the node running in webOS and stated that webOS will soon be updated to version 0.4.11. Paolo Fraqomeni talked about how the design of node is especially suited for the enterprise and the event emitter.
As I see them available, I'll link to the decks for each presentation.
Douglas Crockford
Ben Combee
Nicholaz Zakas
Mikael Rogers
Jed Schmidt
Mike Taylor UPDATED
Rebecca Murphey
Alex Sexton
Alex Russell
Joe McCann
Paolo Fragomeni
Pamela Fox
Brendan Eich UPDATED
The conference was terrific not only because of the speakers but thanks to the work of my friends Laura and Chris Williams. Also because of sponsors there was time to network at parties both before and after the event.
Thanks. A wonderful community.
UPDATE: Group Photo
Friday, July 22, 2011
Update to Roger McNamee's TED Talk, Watch This One
This version of the talk includes a hypothesis about many personal screens that leads to discussing the cloud. To borrow a phrase, "It is the screens, stupid."
http://fora.tv/2011/06/28/Elevation_Partners_Director_and_Co-Founder_Roger_McNamee#fullprogram
http://fora.tv/2011/06/28/Elevation_Partners_Director_and_Co-Founder_Roger_McNamee#fullprogram
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
My JSConf ToDo List
With great anticipation, I will attend JSConf and NodeConf. To get the most out of that time, there are a few items I want to brush up on prior to hitching up the wagon and heading West. I've got a list, some big and some small and in no particular order.
Also I need to review what I wrote after last year's JSConf: a pesky list of ToDos.
- Full Sail Ale. jsbeer prep is first on the list.
- Eloquent JavaScript. Finish reading especially the object oriented chapter.
- jquery mobile alpha4. Convert some code including j360.
- Sencha. Run through the tutorials and screencasts.
- learn about SASS
- jquery plugin. Write a very simple plugin.
- outrigger app site. Create landing page about outrigger app.
- outrigger app. Finish demo data. Ready phonegap feature.
- get new Android phone and install couchdb. Make iphone into an ipad touch for Civ
- learn git well enough to be comfortable with github
- put j360 into git and write readme
- use build.phonegap for j360 and outrigger
- colossal caves into github
- hours reading nodejs blogs and reinstalling on my laptop
- put code into a js module, maybe my search parser
- publish regex attribute for input tutorial for Coding JS Apps http://jsapps.posterous.com/
- fix raydaly.com and raydaly.org
- publish "New Enterprise Network" talking paper
- use ace
- publish on Coding JS Apps an article on using couchdb as development environmen
- new photo for my blogs, twitter, google, quora and facebook
- hitch up the wagon
Also I need to review what I wrote after last year's JSConf: a pesky list of ToDos.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
15 Years of WebApps in JavaScript
15 years ago on January 23, 1996, HTMLjive - an HTML editor written in JavaScript was release. It is considered the first serious JavaScript program. In short order, it went viral, was on websites around the world and translated into several languages.
HTMLjive was a simple HTML editor but it incorporated a preview window, three modes of HTML coding and on-screen help. The inline HTML editors, like the one I'm using right now to write this blog, have added features, but HTMLjive had the basic features you take for granted today.
I am often asked, "Did you expected JavaScript application (web apps) to become popular?" Yes. Shortly after HTMLjive was released, I starting writing the book "Using JavaScript" with several co-authors. One of my great memories is giving an author talk called "JavaScript Makes Your Site An Application" at a local book store a few months later. So, absolutely.
The community that supports JavaScript has come a long way since. Brendan Eich, father of JavaScript, has received the recognition he deserves. Douglas Crockford gave us JSON and is the JavaScript evangelist. Ajax pushed the language back into popularity and Google showed what could be done with Google Maps and Gmail. Now the annual JSconf features the greatest advances, technologies and speakers. Most of the people that deserve a mention for their contributions to the community were or are speakers at JSconfs.
JavaScript is no longer just for the browser. My web apps, both mobile and desktop, have JavaScript on both the browser with libraries like jquery and on the server with couchdb and node.js. Thank you to the community. It continues to be a joy to code in JS because of you.
HTMLjive was a simple HTML editor but it incorporated a preview window, three modes of HTML coding and on-screen help. The inline HTML editors, like the one I'm using right now to write this blog, have added features, but HTMLjive had the basic features you take for granted today.
I am often asked, "Did you expected JavaScript application (web apps) to become popular?" Yes. Shortly after HTMLjive was released, I starting writing the book "Using JavaScript" with several co-authors. One of my great memories is giving an author talk called "JavaScript Makes Your Site An Application" at a local book store a few months later. So, absolutely.
The community that supports JavaScript has come a long way since. Brendan Eich, father of JavaScript, has received the recognition he deserves. Douglas Crockford gave us JSON and is the JavaScript evangelist. Ajax pushed the language back into popularity and Google showed what could be done with Google Maps and Gmail. Now the annual JSconf features the greatest advances, technologies and speakers. Most of the people that deserve a mention for their contributions to the community were or are speakers at JSconfs.
JavaScript is no longer just for the browser. My web apps, both mobile and desktop, have JavaScript on both the browser with libraries like jquery and on the server with couchdb and node.js. Thank you to the community. It continues to be a joy to code in JS because of you.
Monday, April 19, 2010
ToDo After jsconf
jsconf was even better this year than last. A good part of that is because JavaScript and the JavaScript industry is better than last year. Missed most of the Track B talks and I hope to get caught up by watching videos. But most of my spare time may be taken up by the ToDos I wrote myself during the talks. Thought I'd share those.
- node.js Wow - it has simply changed everything. Even if the API is constantly changing, I've got to get it installed and start using it. Needs screencasts.
- (fab) - Mindblowing - fab:: more twitter than blogging. Just a completely new way of thinking of things and I have to try it. Also, it shows the impact of node.
- Google Chrome Framework - Had not thought about it enough until jsconf. This will be so important to my work project. But everyone should add the meta tag to their JS pages. I have to install it at work asap and on a few other desktops.
- yayQuery - Been following on tweeter, now I've got to listen to the podcasts. Clearly the next generation of javascript and funny.
- Raphael - Years ago I wanted a visual, historical, problem solving site base on timelines (timeography.com). Now this is the js library to make it happen. Usable for for ANY type of vector graphics and I can not wait to push it. Reminds me of RIP for BBSs.
- Progressive Enhancements - Jenn made the most convincing case of any presentation. I will be reading up.
- Interface Builders - Ares and Greenhouse demos were good. Of course there is the Mac tool. I need to more take time and look at all of these -- another skill I need.
- SproutCore - More than a year ago I was a real fan of SproutCore. I had previously argued at a Ruby meetup that MVC was broken in Rails because of the mix of data with code in the view and that the server should only produce JSON. Now that SproutCore is at 1.0 and gives me MVC on the client - will time allow a deep try? Looks so good too.
- CVC - Client View Controller by Kyle Simpson pushes the same anti-MVC argument that I was making but puts the same JavaScript on the client and server. Again an incluence of node. Love the concept and certain that is is how the future will go, but it looks like handlebar.js and bikechain.js need to be more battle tested. Have to test to tell
- Couchdb - The talk was on evently, but it is really Couchdb that stills interests me. Two tier solution with JavaScript and JSON. Think this will be the solution for one current project. jquery.couch.js here I come.
- xui - prior to jsconf I went to phonegap training and heard about xui again. It would be great if jqtouch could be build on xui.
- yql - definitely in my toolbox now
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Socratic and Verbalization: Documenting on both sides
Francisco Tolmasky gave a talk at #jsconf on Socratic: Documentation Done Right. He asked for feedback and he got me thinking about the problem that coders documentation does not even help them when they go back to it. Ever have that happen with your documentation? Go back to your source comments three months later and they don't make much sense?
The process of coding involves variable and method names which are suppose to be meaningful. A convention has evolved where methods should be verbs because they do something and variables are nouns. Roughly.
So I suggested to Francisco that perhaps Socratic could use Verbalization to verify that methods are verbs. Think of Verbalization as a spell check of only verbs. Maybe it could check that "is" methods are boolean and perhaps more. I suppose the Nounization could be done on variables.
One theme at JSCONF is running JavaScript on client and the server. For example, same validation method on both. This got me thinking about the documentation divide. So why not run Verbalization on both Socratic and Textmate or your IDE. As you build out your code check that your method names are verbs. And this gets you a glossary? So a common plug system for both Socratic and IDEs would be good.
Just a thought or two with a lot more to think about.
The process of coding involves variable and method names which are suppose to be meaningful. A convention has evolved where methods should be verbs because they do something and variables are nouns. Roughly.
So I suggested to Francisco that perhaps Socratic could use Verbalization to verify that methods are verbs. Think of Verbalization as a spell check of only verbs. Maybe it could check that "is" methods are boolean and perhaps more. I suppose the Nounization could be done on variables.
One theme at JSCONF is running JavaScript on client and the server. For example, same validation method on both. This got me thinking about the documentation divide. So why not run Verbalization on both Socratic and Textmate or your IDE. As you build out your code check that your method names are verbs. And this gets you a glossary? So a common plug system for both Socratic and IDEs would be good.
Just a thought or two with a lot more to think about.
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