CityJSConf 2021 talks to Kitson P. Kelly
An IT consultant by day, a long-term contributor to Deno by night. Prior to ThoughtWorks, Kelly was CTO at SitePen, ran technology at NOW TV, and worked for Sky. We caught up with him in the run-up to the 2021 CityJSConf.
Is TypeScript the future of JavaScript? And why?
The future? I think JavaScript and TypeScript will co-exist for a long time into the future. TypeScript continuing to focus on an optional erasable type system for JavaScript is where the power comes from. The more we focus on TypeScript being a superset of JavaScript, the more it benefits everyone. While I have been a huge TypeScript fan, I do find myself every once in a while testing something in just plain ‘ole JavaScript without any type annotations. I have also done a lot of JSDoc JavaScript enforcing TypeScript types. All these things are good.
Are you aware of any new tools or other libraries you would like to share? Tell us what new JS stuff is coming and how you feel about those?
The ecosystem does seem to be moving faster than ever though, which is tough and intimidating for new people coming into the industry. I suspect I would feel overwhelmed if I were starting my journey now, especially when some of our community feed the FOMO (fear of missing out). I have had the privilege for a long time to be able to ignore a large amount of the noise and pick and choose what I want to participate in. It worries me that we have unintentional and intentional gatekeeping by telling people they need at least two monitors and experience in the latest and greatest fads. We need to evolve and change and grow as a community, but not at the expense of those participating.
What was your first programming language? And how long have you been using JavaScript?
First programming language was BASIC on a TRS-80 Color Computer and have been seriously at JavaScript since 2007 (before that it was using “javascript:alert” in HTML tags).
What advice do you have for junior devs starting out in JavaScript in 2021?
Pick your battles. There is a lot of pressure and noise, but try your best not to get distracted and jump from shiny thing to shiny thing. Full-stack developers are a lie. It takes an experienced senior developer easily 2–3 months to shift specialisation contexts, trying to do that as a junior dev will drive you out of the industry. Multi-disciplinary diverse teams can do awesome things. Collaborate and communicate and try to find a team where collaboration, communication and feedback are more important that a check-list of technical skills.
What are you working on right now in your job? And what are you using to do this?
Most of my focus right now and for quite a while in the future is trying to make JavaScript and TypeScript easier to use. I have been focusing on integrating a language server into the Deno CLI so that users can get a full, rich, reliable development experience in their IDEs. Oddly, this means doing a lot less JavaScript and TypeScript, because most of Deno is written in Rust, so I have learned a lot of Rust over the past year. I almost feel like I know what I am doing with it!
How has COVID-19 affected the way you work?
Well, COVID-19 was well underway when I started working on Deno full-time. So it meant I went from remotely working indefinitely to remotely working permanently. I am really happy/lucky to live in Melbourne, where we returned to some semblance of normal before the end of 2020. The biggest impact is that I am sure those of us involved in Deno would have met up at some point, but we are all in our own isolated countries with no timeline to try to get together.
Do you have any side projects you’re willing to talk about?
I really need to spend some time on Denoify, a polyfill for browsers that allows you to use code written for Deno in a browser without too much effort. One of these days.
How has your journey as a conference speaker been affected by COVID-19 over the past year?
Yes and no. Pre-recording conference talks I have found liberating, as it takes away a lot of the nerves of live presentation, but I do miss talking to folks and visiting other cities.
Tell us about where you are in the world right now.
The suburbs of Melbourne.
How is the Covid-19 situation where you are?
We are really really lucky that we have gotten it under control. We went through 10 weeks of one of the hardest lockdowns in the world (could only leave the house for 1 hour a day and could only travel 5km from the house), but being on the other side of it is wonderful. Lives have almost returned to normal, or at least a new normal. We went out to a cinema for the first time in a year last week. I feel for all of those under restrictions. So many places in the world are so much harder to isolate themselves than what we have been able to do in Australia.
How do you relax and de-stress?
That is a good question. As I mentioned before, we went to the cinema for the first time in a year last week. We generally went weekly up until COVID-19, as it was our “thing”, so getting back to that was super nice, but having a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler makes it really difficult to relax and de-stress. Sometimes I think I need to work on the self-care a bit more.
Have you made a bucket list for the end of lockdown and restrictions? If so, what will you be doing?
Well, the only real restrictions we have in Melbourne and Australia at the moment is that we can’t go anywhere but Australia and New Zealand. I am originally from the US and my husband is from the UK and we have a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler who thinks his grandparents only exist in Facetime. This is the longest both myself and my husband haven’t seen our families, ever. All the grandparents live in areas that have had pretty serious COVID-19 outbreaks, which only adds to the worry and longing.
