Build Stuff

Greek and Roman philosophers had great insight into human behavior, on how to live a more happy and fulfilling life. There is a lot we can learn from them. Even how to write better JavaScript code.

Looking at the stoic way of life that focuses on human freedom can help us understand principles for creating delightful code that demands freedom and gives us full control. Code that is maintainable, readable and immune to many of the everyday JavaScript frustrations we encounter.

In this talk I'll show you how to free yourself from dependencies such as:
Place - How to make your code non dependent on the order it is placed in your script
Time - How to break the temporal coupling in your code, controlling when things execute.
Relationships - How to make your code truly modular and independent from outside code calling in or out

Ever tried building a system to do complex event processing but ended up getting bogged down in all the infrastructure necessary? Or maybe you've tried running temporal correlation queries from a SQL database and become very familiar with nested subqueries... In this talk we'll look at the projections model in the Event Store, and how it can be used both for CEP without the fuss, and as a better way of approaching temporal queries, using only Javascript!

Good tests spur our feet,

bad tests grip like winter mud,

testing zen brings spring.

Acolyte Foo mastered the use of stubs and mocks. Soon the tests were running fast as the swiftest river.The master walked by, and deleted a swath of code: she watched as the tests passed regardless.

The next day, the other acolytes found only a straw dummy in Foo’s bed.  When they asked the master where Foo had gone, she replied: “Observe: these tests were 
Foo’s, they still pass: Foo must be alive and well”.

Thus, the acolytes gained enlightenment.

Backbone, Ember, Angular, Knockout... the question always seems to be "which", rather than "why" - and over the past few years this hasn't changed much despite the server-side JS ecosystem tending away from frameworks. Let's look at some patterns for building client side applications in JavaScript without frameworks (even without jQuery!), and some tooling that can help us do this. We'll dive into aspects of testing and how to manage these code-bases across a large team in such a way that we don't have to resort to crutches like frameworks or alternative languages. Demonstrations will include the use of package managers, build systems and sensible JavaScript to get the job done fast and well.

Despite many ready-made solutions on the market of frameworks for web apps, there’s no solution that can provide a concrete app architecture and work on desktops, phones, Smart TV, and other devices. Some frameworks are too massive, some give no instructions whatsoever on how to build app architecture, some work only for WebKit, while others are simply a set of glossy UI elements in iOS style. Definitely, solutions that enable to use several libraries simultaneously look promising, but often times it looks as if someone tries to hammer a screw into a wall. Content adaptation for various devices and platforms remains unsolved as well. In his presentation, Ilya will speak about the approach he has been using for a number of his big projects aimed at creating scalable cross-platform web apps. He will also touch upon some problems that contemporary web and hybrid application developers face today and share some possible solutions to them.