Northeast JavaScript Conference
Even though I am a Rails developer, I attended the Northeast JavaScript conference (#NEJSCONF). It’s definitely an interesting community and the conference is different compared to GoRuCo.
At NEJSCONF, I learned about a new browser, JavaScript frameworks, how to write my own framework and a few other interesting things.
Keynote: Vivaldi
At the conference keynote, I was already learning new stuff! Mainly: there is another browser being built: Vivaldi. This browser is from the co-founder of Opera: Jon von Tetzchner
The coolest feature of Vivaldi: it has lots of features around tabs, like tab groups, tab placement on the bottom or side. If you like tabs, Vivaldi is for you!
Another cool feature: Vivaldi’s control colors adapt to the site. The address bar changes color to blue when visiting facebook or Twitter. Orange when vipsiting TNW. it can also work with a Phillips hue to change the room lighting to adapt to the site. I think this will be a cool feature when browsing a site on a big TV or projector and the room starts to feel like the website.
One awesome thing the developers of Vivaldi did when building the browser: use chromium as a base instead of writing a new rendering engine. That means chrome extensions work right out of the box. My favorite extension: stylish, just works in Vivaldi.
One thing is that Vivaldi didn’t render properly when I ran it in KDE on Ubuntu Trusty, but it is fine in Gnome.
Major Theme: Frameworks
There were two tracks over two days so I couldn’t attend everything. One major theme which came up in almost every session: JavaScript frameworks, especially between: Angular2, Ember, and React.
Angular2 vs React
Angular2 dominated mindshare since the final version was just released. Interestingly, it seems react picked up a lot of momentum because angular2 was announced to not be compatible with angular1. One panelist, Nabit, said they took that time between angular version 1 and version 2 to try out react and they just stayed with react ever since.
Ember
Ember was the least discussed, even though Edward Faulkner, a core contributor to ember, was on a panel and had a talk.
I wonder if the reason for this is that ember has such an open process for discussion and changes that there is very little drama around the project.
One thing I learned from Edward: community size matters for a project. If the community is too small, developers have to spend time teaching the project to others instead of improving the project.
Most Interesting Session
For me this was by Chris Love where he talked about building ones own Single Page App.
The main reason for this: frameworks have too much bloat. Build your own so it only has what you need in an SPA. Your own SPA will be blazing fast and makes for an excellent user experience, even on an old phone with weak network connection.
Average website is getting bigger and bigger. The average now is larger than the size of Doom game. Wow. That was surprising to me. So, have your own SPA and stand out from the crowd.
I wonder if this is the natural evolution of the JavaScript developer: learn HTML, JS , CSS, jquery, framework du jour, then Learn to work without the framework and write own mini framework.
On my Radar now
There were more than just talks on JavaScript and frameworks, a few new things popped onto my radar from the conference.
Web and Virtual Reality
Thanks to the Stamford tech meetup, I’m big into virtual reality. Damon Hernandez showed off open standards that help bring 3D to the web. The standard I knew as VRML, is now X3D.
Without open standards for VR, there will be lock in for applications. It’s good to see there are budding web standards for virtual reality protocols. This will become more important as VR becomes more prevalent in the world.
IoT, Alexa, and AWS
There have been more hacking around Alexa being posted by Ruby programmers and now JavaScript programmers. Josh Foure gave an intro to hacking Alexa using JavaScript and AWS on the back end. As someone that just got a smart outlet, this is very interesting.
People
The great thing about any conference is the people that attend. I met some of the development team from Starwood hotels, which is based in Stamford. Some attendees from eastern Connecticut, Boston, and even the D.C. Area!
Most Surprising Thing
One of the most surprising things I heard during the conference:
I want to be a rails developer.
It seems there is a whole range of JavaScript developers out there.
Overall
I met great people, learned the benefits of writing my own single page app framework, insights into the current JS framework fight, and a new browser!
Even though I am a Rails programmer, I really enjoyed my experience at the Northeast JavaScript Conference. I’m looking forward to next years!