How Symphony developers went to Belarus for more Frontend knowledge
Having heard about the 2014 Front End Developer Conference in Minsk, we knew immediately the event can’t occur without us. Symphony Solutions hand-picked two Great Troublemakers to infiltrate the event and bring back valuable treasures – knowledge, new friends, ideas and experience.
The Minsk Front-End-Dev Conference is an annual event, one that was very well organised.
There was a number of speakers from different countries, presenting simultaneously in two threads.
Amongst the speakers and presentations that we rated most were:
- Jakob Mattsson on “Testing Web APIs” – which was more about promises in JS and what’s wrong with the current state of affairs;
- Anton Nemtsev on “WebGL and rapid game dev” – which was really about Three.js and advanced 3D graphics in the browser;
- Alexander Solovyev on “ReactJS or how to start a simpler life” – where Alexander has valiantly challenged Google’s desire to rule the web, briefly mentioned why he is a fan of functional programming and then spoke in depth about ReactJS – Facebook’s view library and what’s so special about it;
- Jan Jongboom on “Offline Web Applications” – Jan didn’t cover any technological issues we didn’t already know, but emphasized on how important it is to make our web stuff functional offline – something we very often fail to do.
There was a number of other presentations on UX design, marketing, tips and tricks from the world of JS, etc. Also, a sales person was talking about Rich Media and what it means for advertising – with examples ranging from annoying Skype ads to fully interactive snippets within gaming console dashboards.
This could hardly excite web programmers, and is a hugely distasteful way to advertise, but was a sobering-up reminder that as technology advances, so do the the annoying products of overly aggressive marketing.
The conference didn’t provide a huge amount of new technological knowledge, but was a good chance to catch up with what others in the industry are up to, and brush up on some well known but often neglected aspects of web development, such as offline availability of content, Easter eggs in UX design, responsive icons, the future of ECMA Script, etc.
It was also pleasing on a patriotic level to realise that two out of four most rated (by us) talks were done by Ukrainians - which serves as a yet another demonstration of the weight Ukraine holds as a software development powerhouse in the region.
Upon our return, we organised a little meeting amongst our colleagues to summarise what happened at the conference and share the knowledge and experiences we brought back. The topics discussed were the following:
- Pros and cons of react.js
- Creating graphics on three.js
- How to create simple particle systems within DOM
- Suggestions on how to make delightful UX 5. Some tips on preparing HTML and CSS markup
Source: Symphony Solutions
