Extensive talk list + my review on CSSConf/JSConf Budapest 2019 — part 2of 3
This is a long blog post covering a 3-day conference, so I break it down to 3 sections to represent each day of content.
CSSConf/JSConf Budapest 2019 just drew an end, and now I’m back to my base. I have to say it’s exceeding the expectations:
- very informative talks and well-organized flow
- super good coffee thanks to Espresso Embassy. Fun fact, when I asked if they are a chain cafe, all of them said ‘nooooooo’ simultaneously #chainisevil
- The food was okay, but hey, it’s not a restaurant and they even include dessert in every meal.
- I just said the food was okay, yea, but the breakfast omelets were sooooooo good, I was hoping that I could eat that for the whole day
- location is pretty central, easy to find, AND there’s a 🐱cat cafe nearby!
- gave my lightning talk in Mozilla community lounge, pretty nice experience
- at the end of the conference, they rent a WHOLE bar for everybody to hang out, and they even have tea!! (Non-alcohol drinker’s savior)
- super friendly people, I love them
Some stuff that I think could be improved are:
- it’s a bit annoying that everybody has to wear the wristband for the whole period, and it’s of one-time use so you cannot take it off while sleep
- the workshop is a bit too elementary; should have marked audience level so people don’t have false expectations
Enough of nagging about the side stuff, I’d like to include an extensive list of what each talk is about as well as (maybe) my personal extraction. I almost (yes, there’s an almost) attended every talk, but the mid-conference fatigue hit me so hard that I eventually skipped one and a half talk. Despite that, you’ll still get the gist of everything. These are the links to CSSConf and JSConf Budapest so you can see all the official extractions.
CSSConf BU: https://cssconfbp.rocks/schedule
JSConf BU: https://schedule.jsconfbp.com/
Day #2 JS Conf
- Accessibility vs latest Web APIs. Can’t we just get along?
Accessibility topic is on fire, which means people are really making an effort to make the web as inclusive as possible. In my opinion, that shows the progress of our civilization really. The speaker shows us a small clip of an app called Ava that helps deaf people ‘listen’ to messy daily conversations. He also shared a spotify api supported music app using web speech API to control. BTW he has some really good spotify playlist lol.
Speaker: @palmaswell
- API Modernization: Building Bridges As You Cross Them
The speaker is a core contributor of Electron, and her talk is about how they keep the dependent API modernized and the challenges on that. Pretty technical, I literally felt like I was in a university classroom. Fine, that basically means I cannot make fun of it. Joke ends here.
Speaker: @codebytere
- Testing in production: Ideas, experiences, limits, roadblocks
Yes, he’s telling us to test in production and he has good reasons: Testing in production can allow you to get direct feedback/errors instead of having customer indirect feedback. A tool called CucumberJS can help you, and he also shared a simple list of step what you need to do to test in production as well as how not to disturb real users. He pointed out that the test should think like a user as well as act like a user. Also, a friendly tip is that, remember to clean up test data before it populates your database.
Speaker: @chipironcin
- Weaving the web — Programming textile-based interactions in JavaScript
This girl jumps from one weird IoT to another — last time I saw her playing with the brain sensor, this time she started playing with textile-based IoT. I wish I could be as brilliant as her, maybe as passionate as her to explore those ‘useless’ stuff. You only need some conductive thread, a flora board, a BlueTooth module, some resistors and battery to make something truly awesome.
Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1w7c1IkP2NoBCjUGODvBF0ra8Wn-uXpBCx6-xOR-397I/edit
Speaker: @devdevcharlie
- Javascript Performance in Extreme Conditions: Building WebApps for the Refugee Aid Movement
It’s really awesome to see someone presenting how to help refugees with technologies. The speaker comes from an NGO called Distribute Aid, they built software to help distribute refugee aids. The talk is about the challenges they face with e.g. bad internet or no internet, expensive data, limited power source etc and how they improve the performance so the software is still usable in harsh conditions. I know we developers make a living by solving problems, but I do think there’re more important problems and less important problems. Here they are solving more important problems with very brilliant approaches — definitely worth learning from as well as our support.
Speaker: @DistributeAid
- Composing music with composed functions
Okay so firstly it is about functional programming. The speaker talked about the advantages of functional programming: less for brains to track, prevent unintentional side effects and preserve states. Then he talked about the composition side of functions, which is very similar to music creation. Of course, then he showed us quite some basics of using functions to compose music — not Mozart level for sure.
Slides: https://composed.adamgiese.com/#1
Speaker: @AdamGieseDev
- Essential JavaScript debugging tools for the modern detective
First thing I did after the talk is to set up a very simple snippet in my VSCode: `console.log({})` while basically the talk goes like: you young people, debugging is much more than console.log. But hey, you can at least set up a snippet so you don’t type it a thousand times a day. The talk gave an extensive guide on different console properties how to use chrome dev tool in an advanced way(black boxing to ignore script, live expressions, file system access to make dev tool an editor), proxy overrides(cool tools like resource override, charles proxy, fiddle etc), how to use dev tool performance as well as setting up VSCode debugger.
Slides: https://t.co/oO2pe9XwXK?amp=1
Speaker: @rebekaka
- How not to read the room: Creating socially awkward wearables with machine learning & javascript
It was a super cool necklace… that blinks according to the number of people standing nearby!?
Speaker: @stephaniecodes
- Taming `Git`osaurus Using Mystical Trees: Understanding complex git trees in the developer fairyland
Okay, this is the first talk I had my fatigue hitting, but according to half of my presence, the speaker took us to look at the hidden .git folder and talk about what each git command means and how they reflect in the folder files.
Speaker: @Daminisatya
That’s the conference day 2 as well as JSConf day 1, the previous one is CSSConf day, and next will be JSConf day 2.
About the author: probably the only developer not using a dark themed editor in the room… A semi hipster developer, meetup organizer, women in tech advocate, standup comedian by heart
My twitter handler: @zoeyzou0117
