ECMAScript 6, the new JavaScript standard that’s being released this year, is a huge improvement and upgrade and change from previous versions. That’s because ES6 is in a new world, with different requirements. What are these changes, and what led the ES6 designers to make them? How will this affect the ways in which we’re using JavaScript, and computers in general? How do these changes reflect the new ways in which we’re using computers, which weren’t around when JavaScript was first written? In this talk, Allen Wirfs-Brock reviews not just the changes in JavaScript, but the reasons behind them, and how modern computing differs from what we used just a decade or two ago.
Angular.js is one of the best-known and most popular front-end frameworks. It’s currently going through a difficult time, with a major upgrade in progress. What is Angular2, and how will it differ from the current version of Angular.js? And how much magic will be included, and how will that change the ways in which programmers approach their front-end programming? I
f you’re familiar with Angular 1.x, and are curious about how Angular2 will do things — or if you’re just curious about Angular in general — this talk, by Rody Haddad, should put it into context, and help you to understand how much of your work will be taken care of by the framework. He does this by building an app during the talk, allowing us to walk through the development process as he describes it.
We program using computer “languages,” but how similar are programming languages to human languages? How similar is human thought to the way computers operate? In this interesting (and whimsical) talk, Jenna Zeigen helps us to understand computers by comparing them — and JavaScript in particular — with human minds and thought. How do we process language? How do we handle multiple, parallel tasks? And what insights can we gain about the technologies from this?
Everyone in the JavaScript world is talking about ES6, the next version of JavaScript (or “ECMAScript,” if you want to be official) that will include a large number of new features. What features are most interesting and compelling? And how can we use them? In this talk, Rushaine McBean provides us with an overview of what we can expect in ES6, and how our programming will change and improve as a result. If you’re looking for a quick, high-level overview of what is changing, and how JavaScript programs will soon be more powerful, with features that have been missing in the language since day 1.
As JavaScript becomes an increasingly pervasive part of the technical world, it’s important to squeeze as much performance out of it. If you’re running node.js on the server, then you want to maximize your server’s potential. And if you’re running client-side JavaScript, then you want to waste your users’ time and computer power as little as possible. In this talk, Trevor Norris describes techniques (particularly on the server side) that JavaScript developers can use to reduce the footprint and execution time of their code.
Functional programming is increasingly popular — and, some would say, important. JavaScript offers many functional constructs, but what does that mean? How does functional programming differ from other styles, and how can we incorporate that into our JavaScript code? How do functional techniques allow us to react more easily to changing requirements in our code? In this talk, James Coglan offers many examples of functional techniques in JavaScript, as well as the reasons why we might want to use such techniques.
Ember.js has increasingly proven itself as a high-quality framework for client-side applications. But what command-line tools exist to assist us in creating Ember applications? Ember CLI has become the popular and standard way to do so. In this talk, Brittany Storoz describes how Ember CLI can be useful not only for creating Ember.js applications, but also for creating custom applications that aren’t directly related to Ember.js, by extending Ember CLI. If Mozilla has adopted Ember CLI to create Firefox OS applications, then perhaps you can use it to create in your toolchain, too.
JavaScript is evolving: In the coming months, developers will be able to take advantage of a new version of JavaScript, known as ES6, which includes many new features aimed at making it a more mature language. What is ES6, and what can we do with it? In this talk, Aaron Frost introduces a number of the most important features of ES6, from variable scoping to objects.
Ember.js provides an MVC application framework for creating rich client-side apps. But Ember.js doesn’t control the Web’s infrastructure; on the contrary, it depends on them. The Web consists of many different technologies, each of which is run by a different committee or group. How can Ember.js create a stable, useful framework when Web standards are constantly changing, and run by different groups? In this talk, Matthew Beale describes the different standards bodies, how they work, and how Ember tries to push forward with development while taking the rest of the Web, and its standards, into account.
It’s increasingly common to use a client-side framework to create rich Web applications. But what happens if you already have some client-side code, and want to migrate (slowly and carefully) toward using a client-side framework, such as Ember.js? In this talk, Brandon Hays demonstrates how you can migrate existing JavaScript code to a framework, so that you can stop managing the DOM directly, and think in terms of high-level JavaScript (and Ember) objects.