On 3rd of June 2014, the international conference JSCamp (a JavaScript conference for Romania and Eastern Europe), the first of its kind in our country, took place in Bucharest. The event was dedicated mostly to the people from Web Design and Front End Development.
This first edition was splitted into four intensive sessions about web development trends, case studies and international experiences, open-web technologies and advanced tools.
With a full room, Robert Nyman starts the first session. He is a Technical Evangelist at Mozilla and the Editor of Mozilla Hacks. His presentation is called "The five stages of development" in which he makes a correlation between developing a software project and Kübler-Russ" model, the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. He also presents a new project at Mozilla, Open Web Apps, which represents applications written in HTML5 and JavaScript that work on every platform. Another news is the launching of a feedback channel for Mozilla, where developers can express their opinions and ideas about Mozilla projects: "Making the web a better place isn"t only about trying to figure out what"s right - it"s about listening to people, gather their thoughts and ideas and let that help up in achieving better results".
Tero Parviaien, a Software independent specialist, gives the second presentation, called "How to build your own AngularJS". He talks about three strategies that can be applied when someone wants to use a JavaScript framework in their project: Rejection, Study and Build. He focuses more on the third strategy, where he says that for having a deeper understanding of the AngularJS framework, for knowing when and how it can be used, the recommend option is that the developer should build a system from scratch, something similar to an AngularJS clone, for forming a mental model. A demo is also presented, where he implements an application called RocketLaucher, exemplifying the way the dependency injection is constructed in AngularJS.
Sebastian Golasch, Specialist Senior Manager Software Developer at Deutsche Telekom, opens the second session with a presentation called "The Glitch in the game". The topic chosen is that of testing web pages, which represents a real challenge nowadays. He presents different tools and techniques for preventing glitches, failures and strange behavior of web pages. He also talks about how to automate image differences, testing the CSS code, using monkey testing and testing performance so that it stays consistent over time.
Phil Hawksworth, JavaScript developer at R/Ga, is specialized in developing web sites since the end of the 90s. He talks about "Static Site Strategies". His presentation contains the characteristics of static sites, a series of services and tools that can be used to create robust, high performance sites that can become more dynamic than others more heavy and costly. He also talks about constructing faster, smarter sites, without the need of complex back-ends. He presents the concept "Bake, don"t fry", a "healthier" way that reduces complexity, makes development easier and increases portability.
Martin Kleppe, cofounder and Head of Development at Ubilabs, talks about "Minified Javascript Craziness". His presentation is about the art called cade golfing, that means how to write complex programs in less than 1K of JavaScript. Some of the examples demonstrated were: a globe that spins, the game 2048 and Flappy Bird. He also presented hot to bypass security by using only six different characters.
Peter Müller closes the third session with a topic called "The no build system build system". He is Frontend Lead at Podio and organizer for CopenhagenJS. In his presentation, he focuses on the build and optimization part of the development lifecycle. He explains why a build system is needed, what is the general problem of the build tools and he presents a new project called AssetGraph that helps creating workflow and makes the code more developer friendly.
Patrick H. Lauke, Accessibility Consultant at The Paciello Group opens the last session with the topic "Getting touchy - An introduction to Touch and Pointer Events". He talks about how touch devices are not only included in smartphones and tablets, but also in laptops and even in desktop computers. His presentation contains the handling of touch events, from the simplest tap interactions until multitouch, gestures and using pointer events introduced by Microsoft.
The day ends with Vince Allen, Software Engineering Manager at Spotify, who talks about "Braitenberg and the Browser". Valentino Braitenberg was a neuroscientist in the 1970s and he wrote a book in which he described invisible machines with analog sensors attached. Allen makes an analogy between these machines described by Braitenberg and the modern man with a mobile phone. He talks about the connection between humans and devices. He also presents how JavaScript can be used to create such Braitenberg machines and other natural simulations in a web browser.
Personally, for me it was a very successful conference and the speakers kept me captivated until the end. I am excited about the next edition which I hope will have more great speakers and many more participants!
by Cristian Pup
by Alin Luncan
by Corina Pip
