JSConf X

I recently attended JSConf X, which as you can see from the schedule was so full of JavaScript badassery that the mind can barely comprehend the level of utter awesomeness therein.

One of the best parts was that I finally got to meet a lot of very cool developers, some of whom you can see in my JSConf X photos. Of course, I spent more time talking to people than taking photos, so while there are a whole slew of Adam Sontag dancing photos, you won’t find a “who’s who of JavaScript” this time around. Maybe next year! (Who am I kidding?) Oh, I nearly forgot.. I also got to watch Rey Bango h4x0r Pete Higgins’ iPad. It was pretty hilarious, and I’m sure Rey is still patting himself on the back.

Another of the best parts was that I learned a lot about server-side javascript patterns from Kyle Simpson and a bit about what Ryan Dahl is doing to node.js to speed things up (like, nginx-level speeds at 300 concurrent connections!!) which has me totally stoked to get right in there and start rebuilding my site!

Of course, I can’t do that just yet, because I’m in the process of writing a series of articles on jQuery plugin development best practices, as well as a presentation to go with it… but it’s on the list, because seriously, who doesn’t get excited about this:

Server JS + Templates ↔ “Black box” model + RESTful JSON API ↔ Client JS + Same Templates

Ohmygawd awesome, right??

Speaking of “good parts,” Douglas Crockford talked about JavaScript’s good and bad parts. He also slammed HTML5, which nearly everyone thinks is a bit mental, but that’s ok, because he’s “The Crock,” and we know that he means well.

What else? Let’s see… CoffeeScript’s syntax is awesome, and now I’m frustrated because JavaScript doesn’t look or act exactly like that. Michael Mahemoff is doing some really cool single-page app stuff using fantastic-sounding techniques like “Iframe squirting.” Apparently, John Resig is offering up a new DOM API proposal, which is over 9000 better than the current DOM API.. F1LT3R aka Al MacDonald dropped some WebGL science-bombs on us, and Aaron Quint gave the keynote presentation on making bacon / making code including this amazing video.

And that was just day 1. Well, just what I manage to remember seeing from day 1.

Now, for night 1, we all got together on a big boat as an excuse to drink heavily. I’m just surprised that our group of 98% dudes didn’t intersect (or worse yet, collide) with the sorority party that was being held just one floor above us. I’m also very thankful that we didn’t collide (or worse yet, collide catastrophically) with the prom group two floors above us (i can imagine some rather brilliant sketchy trading of booze-for-your-girlfriend or something equally ingenious inappropriate).

Day 2 was no less exciting than day 1.. apparently SproutCore is the coolest web application framework that I’ll never, ever use, and Dmitry Baranovskiy called Microsoft’s VML a “stinky, smelly piece of shit” in his talk on Raphaël. As I mentioned earlier, Kyle Simpson gave his excellent “Dude wheres my UI Architecture” talk, and Makinde Adeagbo talked about how Facebook removed like one billion lines of JavaScript and replaced it with some code that doesn’t actually work. But, hey, my wife doesn’t use IE6 or 7, so it’s all good.

In addition, John-David Dalton got sandboxed, Furf got Sexy, Justin Meyer got organized, and Souders got even faster, giving like six talks at once (and afterwards, he also laid out a scenario in which my loadAdScript jQuery plugin might fail). By that point, I was wandering around a bit, trying to get my boarding pass all squared away, so I missed most of Billy Hoffman’s talk as well as all of Brendan Eich’s and Alex Russell’s talks.. but next year I’m leaving “the day after” so that I won’t miss anything!

All that being said, the “most” best part, however, was the booze. Chris Williams should be commended for not only putting together two days of amazing speakers together, but he also did it with a pirate theme, a great sense of humor, and everyone had all the beers they could possibly want. That’s the way it should be done.