JS Nation & React Summit 2022 from the eyes of a professional impostor

Blue sky on the docks of Amsterdam in the morning of JS Nation

On July 16 et 17, I was lucky to be invited by my company iAdvize to attend in Amsterdam the highly recommended and popular events JS Nation and React Summit, organized by GitNation. As a very young developer, this meant a lot and it made me grow as a Software Engineer. Here’s why.

By “young developer”, I mean really young. I am 34 years old, but I have coded for only 2 and a half years. I am one of these “Bootcampers” (from Le Wagon) who learnt the ways around an IDE and the terminal in a few months. Before that, I was an editor in movies and TV, mostly editing documentaries about fallen idols who took a little too many aspirins. I’ll skip the part where I get very into coding for many reasons and decide to make it a big part of my life, you’ve read too many articles about that already. Next thing you know, I’m starting my first developer job in April 2020 (yes, I got it during the lockdown). Everything goes well, then a few months ago, I decide to take a leap forward and join iAdvize, to work for the Live Shopping experience Aploze. My title becomes Software Engineer *Cue in the Yeaaaaaaaah from “Won’t get fooled again” *

Here’s what I actually think I am when I call myself a Software Engineer

Back to Amsterdam. I’m still shocked that I got the luxury to attend all this. Because, even though I have coded for quite a bit now (about 2 years now), I still consider myself an impostor, especially when I’m seated next to some devs from Meta, Twilio, listening to speakers from Mozilla, Google, Github, talking to the creator of Svelte…

Now how is this relevant when this article is supposed to talk about the conferences. Well from all the talks, one especially inspired me: Confessions from an Impostor by Kyle Simpson. It’s almost 2pm during the JS Nation, I just ate so I’m getting a little sleepy, and I hear this cool dude I’ve never actually heard of. Kyle has written some really cool books about Javascript (I’ve actually just ordered a few of them when I’m writing this). He knows his s***. Or maybe he doesn’t. What he’s saying is basically that no-one actually knows everything. So no-one should feel like he knows way less than everyone else and feel like an impostor. What I mostly remember from his talk is what it is to be a professional impostor:

Passionate enough to do early and often, patiently evolving observed experience into expertise, curious and willing to ask how.

This completely defines me. And that really changed the way I listened to each talk of the conferences. I told myself that I might be am impostor, but I completely assume it, and I’m actually not bad at all at what I do. Maybe it’s the word “professional” that really inspired me here.

Now that’s what I think I am (minus the gun and the dead body… you get the idea: I’m cool, ok ?)

Yes, I did listen to many people who developed some pretty hardcore stuffs I would probably not be able to even think of by myself. But even though I’m not on the same level doesn’t mean I can’t be interested, on the contrary. Here are the other great talks I’ve attended:

• 1. Yulia Startsev: How JS Modules work: a Browser Perspective (JS Nation)
  Yulia is a rockstar programmer from the Mozilla team called SpiderMonkey. She has the coolest DoM T-shirt that looks like the game Doom. She’s ultra smart but she speaks to everyone (I can tell you, some of the speakers did not). A deep dive into JS modules which really got me into understanding more the core of Javascript.
• 2. Tanner Linsley: 5 Years of Building React Table (React Summit)
  Tanner is a professional speaker, you can tell. Hearing him talk about his journey into creating React Table, one of his awesome libraries, is like going to a StandUp Show in a cool club in the middle of Williamsburg or something. He’s fun and he can code. What else?
• 3. Rich Harris: Full Stack Documentation (JS Nation)
  The creator of Svelte is also quite a fun person who even sang during his talk. Please watch it. Rich gave a great talk about the kits we’re using to make our apps and of course SvelteKit. This made me want to look into all these other JS Frameworks like Svelte and Solid which I’m not familiar with at all.
• 4. Anjana Vakil: The Art of Functional Programming(React Summit)
  I’ve learned about functional programming when I arrived at iAdvize, really got into it, so I was very much looking forward to hear from Anjana. She definitely delivered and gave a great talk about how and why it’s great. I’d need a 10 pages article to make some sense about it so just listen to her instead.

And so many more you can attend if you come next year! You might just find me there as well because I’ve very much looking forward to come back. I’ll still be an impostor, but isn’t everyone ? … Ok, not YOU.

See you next year and cheers!

Many thanks again to my company iAdvize for giving us the chance to participate to this great event.