Thunder Plains

React.js brings significant benefits to front-end development: performant virtual DOM diff, one-way data flow and a great component system. React, however, is just the "V" in MVC, so the question of how to actually architect your application quickly arises. In this talk we will explore using React to build full apps including complementary libs, tooling, pain points and more. We will touch on the flux pattern and our React-based MV* implementation.

Genetics: the final frontier. What is the link between the human genome and Javascript? Do you want to find out why your body does that weird thing? In this talk we will unravel the mystery surrounding your source code, and explore using Javascript to make sense of it. Included with your ticket is a copy of my genome which you may use to make clones.

I will be describing in detail why organizing and preparing your team and project for when it gets large is an obvious win over the lifetime of a web application. Specifically talking about how spending some time and effort considering the long term implications of up front design and tooling decisions will result in a better organized and easily maintained project as it gets MASSIVE! I'll go into detail about tools, processes, can best practices that will help make the project scalable and maintainable. There will be a section that is specific to Angular applications taking about 1/3 of the available time.

Ever wanted to make a game? How about a recommendation engine? Come hear how Crunch Magic mixed Node.js and Redis into a potion that does both.

Using build tools and public git repositories allow developers to create for and distribute our work to...other developers. But what about artists and writers and other non-developers who don't know how to open terminal, let alone run `npm install`? I'm going to talk about how I entered this problem space by building a drawing app and learning how to document and distribute code in a way that people of all technical and non-technical backgrounds can enjoy it.

But it works on my machine!” Oh, that terrible feeling when the code that runs like a champ in your dev environment falls flat on its face in production. And you don’t know why.

A missing dependency?
Permission issue?
Wrong version of Node installed?

Don’t worry, there is a very nice solution to this problem: Make the dev environment match the production environment. In this session we’ll take a look at how to run our code in a Docker container to ensure dev and production are identical. We’ll start with an introduction to Docker and how it works and move on to running our NodeJS API in a container. We’ll also take a look at Vagrant for running and building these Docker containers a development time. When you leave this session you have a good understanding of what Docker and Vagrant are, how they make your development and production environments better, and how they work together.

Theres two things I am absolutely passionate about:

1) Cordova for mobile applications
2) JavaScript

Using the Javascript framework Ionic built on top of Cordova, it's easy to make slick mobile applications built with web technologies. Ionic is built with several components from AngularJS, is open source, and has an ever growing user base with forums. Lets embrace JavaScript and make apps that are capable of running on your mobile phone through an app or a web browser.

Today, companies are competing for technology talent more than for business. As a developer, you have more power than you may realize. You have the power to shape our technology landscape and build the kind of companies for which you want to work (and not just by founding them). Google doesn’t hold the monopoly on developer culture nor does Silicon Valley hold the monopoly on job opportunities in innovation. Learn how as a developer at any level of the corporate ladder you can make an impact in your company, and Kansas City, through building developer communities.

Atwood's Law says that "any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript" and it's hard to think of any prediction of software development's future that has been more accurate than this! The "applications" that we are writing in JavaScript are no longer limited to browsers or even general purpose computing devices. There's a growing army of do-it-yourself electronics out there, and thanks the ingenuity of people like Rick Waldron and his Johnny-Five framework for NodeJS, we have robots that run on JavaScript!

Yes, ROBOTS THAT RUN ON JAVASCRIPT! Johnny-Five *is* alive! But, unlike the 1986 hollywood robot from which the Johnny-Five framework gets its name, no robots will be struck by lightning or gain artificial intelligence in this presentation. What you'll see, instead, is a guy with a little bit of electronics knowledge, a willingness to plug wires in to batteries, and an empty wallet from buying far too many Arduino toys.

See what the electro-mechanical-buzz is all about as Derick blows some LEDs, shows some real world interaction with an XBox controller, and drives a robot with a LeapMotion device! Come for the robots, stay for the accidental birth of SkyNet from a misplaced "this" in a JavaScript callback!

Twitter flame wars. Open source project failures through contributor fallout. Bullying that leads to the bullying of bullies.

How do we maintain our communities? How do we grow them? How is anyone in their right mind stepping into the caustic social media environment of programming we have created for ourselves?

There are steps we can take with user groups, conferences, online worlds that can help support an inclusive environment that allows for debate, learning, growing, and excitement. The social sciences have 100 years of research that can provide us with tools to treat our fellow programmers with care. Much of this has been battle-tested in the organizations we run. The bubbles we live in. Let's share how we're creating a better world that is welcoming to programmers, new and experienced, so that we're leading by example.

Your words are powerful, and “actions speak louder than words, but not nearly as often.”

Ember is an opinionated application framework. Like many opinionated frameworks things get much easier when you learn what those opinions are, and why they are in place. This session will bring you up to speed on the concepts represented by all of the major parts of the framework, and you'll be well on your way to quickly delivering highly interactive applications.

MVC is a popular pattern used in both server side and client side frameworks. Unfortunately due to the differences in focus, some of the common words and phrases can become overloaded and confused. This session will dive into the specific parts of server and client side MVC patterns, comparing and contrasting each part of the system. Code examples will be in Ruby on Rails for the server, and Ember.js for the client, but the concepts will be broadly applicable to other languages.

This talk will be an introduction to the data structures and phases involved in parsing (tokenization, abstract syntax trees, control flow graph generation), and what useful tools can be built on the various derived formats of your code. The overarching theme is that dealing with your code on a different level of abstraction gives you superpowers. This talk will include information about control flow graphs + doing code review, static analysis, and optimization with that intermediate format.

As NodeBots platforms get more and more diverse, they're also getting smaller and easier to build and program. This talk explores crafting wearable tech using sensors, outputs, and all written in JS. This includes sewing together robotics pieces, dealing with stray wires, and other wearables-specific challenges.

Two years ago at WDT, the technology solution for any web application was LAMP. My breaking point was us investigating Zend PHP to expand our application capabilities. I was over it, we knew JavaScript and there was a great new (but a bit unstable) platform out that was starting to make some noise. It was time to make a change.

I went through struggles with management, other developers and most definitely myself on whether or not node.js was the right technology (spoiler alert, it might not be).

I want to share my experiences and tips on how to make the decision if node is right for your company and how to convince others (and especially yourself) that node will work and it's not really going out on a limb.

For years developers have been told to think about and bake security into their apps while they code for various reasons. This talk will explore this old adage and see just how it might play out, live. As a web application is built we will explore when is the right time to think about security controls like authentication, authorization, security headers and many more and what can happen if those are ignored.