React Conf London 2017

This week I attended the React conference in London. This event was a bunch of firsts to me and I thought I’d share my experiences with you. If any of the following list falls into your interest, read more below.

The firsts, sort of a TL;DR

• First conference by the Red Badger guys (huge thanks)
• First time I heard about React hardware (yep it is a thing)
• First time I saw someone shot on the stage with a crossbow (actually it was a #crossbro)
• First time I had heard about an IT guy doing a push-up challenge (Mark Zuckerberg, but still counts)
• First conference since I moved to London (not that you should care)

The conf

As the seats were filling up in the conference hall of the QEII, it was more and more obvious that the guys at Red Badger are doing a great job in the London React community. Since their start in May 2014 the React London User Group came a long way from arranging small meetups to a full blown conference with many great speakers from all over the world. Not to mention food, stickers, welcome pack and interesting companies with lots of job opportunities and more importantly fascinating talks.

Build your own react renderer

In a talk by Dustan Kasten we got to learn about rendering to different targets like VR or Native platforms (washing machines, toilet seats) with the help of the Fiber engine coming in React 16. Since the devs at Facebook decided to expose the rendering API in the new iteration of the framework they opened the door for any front end dev to implement their own. So if you are writing a blog engine with static HTML content and minimal or no JS at all, here is your chance to still ignore this framework. But if you are one of those people who disassembles every pen that he puts his hand on since childhood, feel free to look at the API and implement your own renderer.

Shot on stage by a crossbro

The most awesome talk of the day arrived late, but was more refreshing than a shot of caffeine right into your eye socket. Our fellow dev, Ken Wheeler from the US of A, brought a crossbow (a.k.a. crossbro) to the conference with an intention to shoot his new colleague live on stage, using only a react app (and laser for better aim; obviously). Luckily, the ammunition was plastic and the audience survived, but we got to know about how you can use react for controlling any hardware (not just bows) that you can get your hands on.

When asked in the Q&A session, why would you build such a thing: the answer was an american flag (period).

Push-ups with Mark

The most important lesson of the day came from the panel discussions when we got to learn that you should not, under any circumstances, challenge Mark Zuckerberg to anything. Not even push-ups, no… let me rephrase that, especially not push-ups. As it happens, someone tried it at a Facebook conference during a Q&A session, in the form of a question:

- Hey Mark! How many push-ups can you do?!

- More than you.

Apparently, Mark won…

Some tech

The rest of the talks at the conf were more theoretical than deep dives, so here is a list of the technologies we got to know a bit about:

• Automatic code formatting with prettier.
• A new communication protocol based on event sourcing called logux.
• Type safety and AOT in react with the reason project.
• A JS based styling system with styled components.
• Offline first and PWAs with redux offline.
• Snapshot testing with Jest or AVA.