EmpireJS Highlights and Thoughts
This is not the only post you will find on the internet about it, I create a personal post here more as a personal reference.
I went to the Empire JS (http://2016.empirejs.org) conference last week, and I would like to share some interesting talks here:
All you need is the desire and love of Javascript:
Empire JS 2016
Time:
May 26 & 27.
Location:
The National Museum of the American Indian,
1 Bowling Green,
New York, NY 10004
Highlights
I ❤ Music & the Web
Tim Pietrusky
Human ears can catch music frequency range from 20Hz to 20000Hz.Tim found a way to create and visualize music in the browser using MIDI devices.
Using Javascript + Loop drop, he built a virtual music studio - Nerddisco which replaces the DJ devices like Roland TR-808, MIDI Controller. (With surface book’s touch screen, you can turn the tablet as a real DJ controller.)
He also introduced Web VJ Group – a working group of web devs who love making visualization using different web APIs:
The live VJ demo was pretty expressive. i.e. Analyze the audio.
Automagic UI Elements
Abdella Ali
Introducing Redux: Redux is a predictable state container:
It helps you write applications that behave consistently, run in different environments, and react way to debug, bring new experience in develop apps.
UI data driven model: action-> reducers-> store-> view (create immutable object)
Make art with JavaScript
Sher Minn Chong
She showed how to use P5.js + Vanilla canvas API + recursion algorithm in javascript to draw the Mandelbrot set – The very famous example in Fractal, which is often called the most beautiful math.
How To Be A Great Developer
Edward Finkler
With 20-years web dev experience, he talks about how to be a great develop in 5 aspects:
1. Practice Empathy:
Impact users and care feeling from the rest of team.
Anticipate questions and confusion.
Think weeks/months/years ahead.
Make choice with teammates in mind.
Do not assume people know as you know.
2. Practice Humility:
Always keep learning.
Accept own mistakes.
You could be wrong about many things.
3. Always Be Learning:
Liberal in learning and conservative in using.
Any tech can be fit depends on needs of the projects.
Set aside a time to learn new tech.
4. Avoid Tribalism:
Refuse it.
Build communities.
Reserve your loyalty to people.
5. Better Your Community
Make people lives better with your skill.
Listen / understand / help / empower.
Desktop JS
Evan Morikawa
He talked about the open source project – N1, a desktop mail app. Using:
- Nw.js
- Node webkit
- Atom shell
- Electron (Support: Win 10 /Mac os x)
The benefits from desktop JS app:
1. "Native" support experience: No cross browser issue.
2. Performance: Use web workers for multi-threads.
3. Data storage & offline: Use client side local storage.
4. Plugins & Extensibility: React Components...etc.
It’s impressive that how JS can do as a modern web technology for a desktop application. I feel it has similar idea like Microsoft UWP, but different approach.
This is your brain on JS
Tara Lindhal
Tara is a psychologist. And she showed us how our brain works when we are coding.
The react experiments based on:
- Language
- Feeling
- Feedback (Positive Info/ Warning/ Errors)
A very good example is Elm
Node.js Releases, how do they work?
Myles Borins
He talked about Node.js Release strategy:
1. Different stages: Patch / Minor / Major
2. Alternative versioning (Even: stable / Odd: Unstable)
3. Github labels / Cherry-pick changes
4. Prevent behavior change: CI / Smoke Testing
5. V4.4.X LTS details
Note: OpenSSl is going drop support line this Oct.2016 for 0.10.45 to 0.12.14. Which means Meteor most likely will start to move off from node v0.10.x to v4.x+ And once 1.4 coming out and it supports v4.x+ (Azure has native support for), we can just git push Meteor project to Azure.
References
Conference theme song here. Mapping JS Conferences here.
Thank you for reading, hope this will benefit your daily work. Feel free to leave your comment here and share with others! :)