A presentation at DevFest Nantes 2018 in in Nantes, France by Chris Heilmann
Watch this space… Chris Heilmann (@codepo8) October 2018
Welcome, makers of our space! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque
Coding should be for everyone… twitter.com/stephstad/status/994340133733253120
Coding can be a second chance… twitter.com/JBalloonist/status/994957763154411520
What’s wrong with coding? nothing null undefined “” [] false NaN
I am worried about the perception of coding… ▪ Huge misconception: everybody who learns to code will have a great, fulfilling job. ▪ Danger: people who just learned to code will immediately build products without understanding what they do. ▪ Hype isn’t good: we are professionals, not miracle workers.
The “coder” of today is the astronaut of the 50s
An astronaut with job security and no physical demands…
If we look closely, things look bad.. @codepo8 https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2 017/09/saving-the-world-from-code/540393/
We start to realise the mess we created @codepo8 Nikita Prokopov http://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/
Code as craft (or even art) is 3.62% of what we do…
We need to improve the quality of day-to-day code
It started simple and future-proof… @codepo8 warnerbros.com/archive/spacejam/movie/jam.htm
Openness and resilience is both gift and curse… @codepo8
Web tech was terrible and we hacked our way through @codepo8
The need to be forgiving… @codepo8 ▪ Anyone is allowed to write code for the web – or use whatever they want to create that code. ▪ Users shouldn’t suffer from developer errors ▪ Legacy products will never get fixed ▪ You can’t break the web
Years of technical debt…
The web of today is slow and annoying…
Which is odd, seeing that most users are on mobiles
With unreliable connections.
It is up to us to clean this mess up. @codepo8 ▪ Developing software products is a service to our users ▪ We all profited from years of “let’s see what works” ▪ It is time to be more responsible as creators of software products ▪ And that’s not being a Rockstar, Ninja or Code Warrior.
It may be the warriors who get the glory. But it's the engineers who build societies. – Steve Jobs
It may be the warriors who get the glory. But it's the engineers who build societies. – B'elanna Torres
Astronauts are users empowered byengineers Director of Apollo Flight Computer Programming Margaret Hamilton https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11
It was never easier to get started…
Soon you realise that you need to know a lot… @codepo8 ▪ Performance ▪ Accessibility ▪ Interoperability ▪ Security ▪ Maintainability ▪ Browser Quirks ▪ Developer toolchains ▪ Browser developer tools ▪ Abstractions ▪ CLI ▪ Editors
Where to learn all that? @codepo8 ▪ Standards documentation? ▪ Browser vendor docs? ▪ Conferences? ▪ Books? ▪ Workshops? ▪ Developer tools? ▪ News channels?
Learning obstacles @codepo8 ▪ Resources with upvoting options favour the how over the why ▪ We’re not paid to learn, we’re paid to deliver ▪ Peer pressure makes developers who don’t know things afraid to admit it ▪ There’s always a “good enough” way to create a lot in a short amount of time.
Tooling and insights into how our code works is great @codepo8
Customisable best practices in context @codepo8 ▪ Having information isn’t enough when people don’t go there ▪ We need to prevent mistakes before they happen ▪ We need to allow people to customize these experiences. An intranet site needs different settings than a marketing site ▪ So, let’s target editors and build processes
Linting and inline insights in editors @codepo8 code.visualstudio.com
webhint.io webhint.io
Enter a URL… webhint.io
Get a report on issues… Add new screenshot webhint.io
Get explanations why these are issues & how to fix them webhint.io
Get in-depth explanation on the issues… webhint.io
Hinting during deployment @codepo8 ▪ A web interface to get reports doesn’t scale to production ▪ Why not install hinting at as part of your build/deployment process? ▪ That way you can also test the setup of your bundler/preprocessor to avoid huge release sizes
Out of the box hints… Performance Development environment Accessibility PWA Readiness Interoperability Security
Customising hints… webhint.io/docs/user-guide/
How about preventing people to make errors?
webhint @code extension https://medium.com/webhint/getting-hints-from-visual-studio-code-69118e48de1b
Create valid app manifests… webhint.io
Fixing your tooling setup… webhint.io
Are you creating inaccessible content? webhint.io
We’re working right now for a much different web than we used to…
And the web is under attack…
The open web is under attack… @codepo8 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/pressroom/20180906IPR12103/parliament-adopts-its-position-ondigital-copyright-rules
The open web is under attack… https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-takes-action-restoreinternet-freedom @codepo8
The open web is under attack… @codepo8 Slate.com
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/21/formergoogle-chief-predicts-internet-will-split-by-chinese-web-anamerican-one/ Are we too late? https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/21/for mer-google-chief-predicts-internet-will-split-by-chineseweb-an-american-one/ @codepo8
Our accumulated insights are a great starting point… @codepo8 ▪ We accumulated a lot of great knowledge on how to do web the right way ▪ Instead of re-iterating this knowledge and hope people get it, let’s use this as a base to start from ▪ Our technology stack has evolved from a text editor and a terrible browser to amazing, open tools. ▪ Let’s introduce new people of the web to them early on - as part of the development setup.
It’s cool to be an engineer – NASA has them! ▪ Nothing should stop you from building wild and cool things ▪ Thinking about code as a career, maybe it is time to concentrate on making what we do more reliable ▪ If we stop writing bloated and short-lived solutions that can be maintained we free ourselves to explore the universe…
Thanks! Chris Heilmann @codepo8
Something isn't working out. We drown in excellent tools and information about how to build great content for the web. And yet what is out there is in dire need of optimisation. Let's offer our years of knowledge as a part of the development environment instead, maybe that will do the trick?
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