ReactiveConf — In the loop with Jared Forsyth
Get to know speakers before meeting them at the conference
This is the first of a series of interviews to introduce you to some of the super awesome ReactiveConf speakers. This is a great opportunity to know what are they up to these days and what is on store for the conference. Today we are really happy to be talking with Jared Forsyth!
Note: questions and answers have not been transcribed but adapted from notes.
Hi Jared! Thanks for making the time. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Sure. I work at Khan Academy using JavaScript, Java, Objective-C, and Swift. I am also a big fan of other Programming Languages like Rust, Go and more recently got my hands into OCaml and Reason.
What I do when approaching a new language is experiment with some Generative Art to get me started. I am also happy to throw into the mix some Mathematics and generated graphics to have some fun. This lets me get my hands dirty & make something cool without having to depend on too many external libraries.
Projects I’ve done recently:
- Flame Explorer (Go)
- Rusty Automata and Grow (Rust)
- ClojureScript Tutorial (ClojureScript)
Cool stuff! What are you preparing for ReactiveConf?
I am preparing a talk and a Workshop to cover all things Reason.
I will be doing the workshop together with Daniel Woelfel and Sean Grove. Looking forward to work with them and get the people up-to-speed with Reason.
It seems that Reason is very hot at the moment. What can you tell us about it?
Reason is a project that adds a JavaScript-style syntax and a bunch of conventions and tooling to OCaml. The goal is to make this awesome language, with its powerful type system and robust multi-platform compiler, accessible to a broader audience.
If you’ve used TypeScript or Flow, you’ve probably come across the places where it falls short, simply because JavaScript wasn’t designed from the ground up with an expressive statically-checked type system. Reasonprovides a solid foundation to create the next generation of applications. Besides a full featured Type System it provides great JavaScript interoperability. So you can progressively introduce it in your projects.
It seems that Reason is the real deal. What would be your advice for someone considering it for their next project?
Be ready to get your hands a little dirty! Reason is a relatively new project, and so there are still some things being ironed out — how best to handle GraphQL queries, how to handle asynchronous functions well and avoid the callback-pyramid-of-doom, etc. But already it’s got a lot of compelling features that have me hooked.
I would also recommend them to join the vibrant Reason Discord Channel and check out the new website (below) with plenty of examples and documentation.
Nice. In your opinion what are Reason key features?
These are Reason key features:
- Strong Type System (OCaml)
- Familiar JavaScript syntax compared to similar alternatives like Elm or OCaml.
- Great interoperability with JavaScript
- Projects recompile in a few milliseconds, compared to a few seconds with e.g. webpack
That’s very useful. Thanks for that. What are you working at the moment?
These days I am working on a debugger that will help troubleshoot type related errors in Reason easier to tackle for beginners.
That’s awesome! We have seen Tooling and Developer Experience becoming a core theme in React and other frontend frameworks. As a last question: what talks or topics are you looking forward to at ReactiveConf?
In general I would be looking at what’s coming with React 16 and as for the talks the ones from Richard Feldman (Elm), David Nolen (Clojure Script) and Uri Goldshtein (GraphQL) are definitely on my list.
Cool. I bet these are shared with a lot of the attendees to the conference. Thanks for your time and looking forward to meet you in Bratislava during ReactiveConf.
It was a pleasure. Thanks for preparing these questions and see you soon at the conference!
