HalfStack 2018
Last week I made the arduous trek across London to attend HalfStack 2018 and represent Gumtree frontend.
Billed as a javascript conference in a pub, with the aforementioned pub being the perennially cool Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, HalfStack is a conference unlike any I’ve attended in the past. Focussing on modern frontend topics such as ES2018, WebVR and Typescript amongst others, it manages to pack a lot of diverse information into a short time and in a rather small and intimate space.
Below are my highlights of the day but I would recommend any of talks from the event which can be viewed here (2018 videos will be uploaded shortly): https://halfstackconf.streameventlive.com/
Chris Heilmann, Microsoft — Bringing Best Practices Front and Centre
Slide available here: https://noti.st/codepo8/isR7Bz/bringing-best-practices-front-and-centre
Why is it that most developers feel as though they can’t keep up with the latest technology, the hippest framework or the buzziest buzz word? Is it because we don’t have good best practices in place, or is it maybe that we don’t utilise the tools we already have to bring those best practices to the forefront of our development.
“Instead of whining that people don’t follow best practices, let’s them make part of the build process”
Chris explains how that by using features on our IDEs and with the help of outside tools, such as webhint.io we can make sure our best practices are there from the start.
Ana Migas, Lunar Logic — Fast But Not Furious: Debugging User Interaction Performance Issues
Slides available here: https://www.slideshare.net/AnnaMigas1/halfstack-fast-but-not-furious
Performance is something which every developer would like to improve and Ana Migas is here to show us how. UI is great at engaging users but the performance cost can sometimes be massive, some of the key takeaways to improve this being:
- Try not to create unnecessary layers
- Use will-change to let the browser know which elements and properties will be changing, info available here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/will-change
- Use dev-tools in browser to look at the performance, layers and rendering of your page
It is also worth trying to avoid potentially dangerous UI patterns. These include animations, parallax (parallax is generally just bad for performance but if you really want to relive the mid 2010s then check out https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/12/performant-parallaxing.), and fixed elements which cause a repaint of every frame when scrolling.
Liliana Kastilio, Snyk — npm install-disaster-waiting-to-happen
Liliana is here to remind us that even the best engineers can introduce major security flaws, which is comforting in a way but also very scary. She drives home the message that in an age of data breaches, it’s time to start paying attention to application security and taking a closer look at what’s really in that hot new npm package you’ve been dying to install.
With recent increase of data breaches, it is now more important than ever to really start paying attention to application security. As we introduce more and more open source dependencies into our code bases, performance is no longer the only concern. With every new dependency we are potentially bringing in new vulnerabilities that attackers are waiting to exploit. Even smart, well-intentioned and experienced developers can introduce vulnerable packages. How do you know that the open source package you just added in is not going to cause your customers data ending up for sale on the dark market?
Sean McGee, Esri UK — Buying a House with Javascript
I’ll spoil the ending here, Sean hasn’t had any luck with buying a house yet but he’s managing to make looking for one a lot easier with the power of maps, open source data and a lot of skill.
Starting by using the Zoopla API, Sean mapped all these properties against criteria which are important to him, such as drive time, crime stats and flood risk. He then hooked it up with Twilio so it alerts him with a text whenever a property matching his criteria gets put on the market. If you’re into maps (like me) you’ll really enjoy this talk.
Honorable mentions for creativity
Stephen Cook, Onfido — 100% CSS Mario Kart
Slides available here: https://github.com/stephencookdev/mario-kart-css-talk
Demo available here: https://codesandbox.io/s/zk15o120xl
This talk did exactly what it said on the tin, Stephen faithfully recreates Mario Kart using only CSS and a few lines of HTML.
Carolyn Stransky, Blacklane — The Most Important UI: You
Slide available here: https://speakerdeck.com/carolstran/the-most-important-ui-you?slide=21
A talk based around self-care and how not to burn out and rue the day you started writing code. A lot of common sense advice that a lot of us don’t take, so it’s nice to be reminded once in a while.
Jani Eväkallio, Formidable — This Talk Is About You
Slides available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yI9hn1XGBVKelYWYYC_LsRlMxlbcAcM4/view
Often times confusing and funny in equal measure — Jani’s talk is seen to be believed. Slides are available but best to wait until the videos are up to relive the real experience.
Tickets are available for HalfStack 2019 — https://halfstackconf.com/
