How I visited HolyJS Moscow and do I need to go there

Last Sunday, December 11th, I had the opportunity to participate in HolyJS Moscow , a grand event entirely dedicated to JavaScript. The amount of information at the conference was amazing (it was not even without mentioning other technologies, although this is logical: everything is interconnected in the world of web development), but from the whole array I personally remember four reports. Immediately make a reservation: the point is not that others were better or worse, it was just these that caught my attention more than others. And here I will explain in detail why this is so.

To begin with - a small lyrical digression. One of the reasons for my moving to Moscow was just to be able to participate in such events, be in the center of the latest news and technology, always be on the crest of a wave and be up to date with fashion trends in the world of frontend. I do not even remember exactly when I was seized with a craze to study all the information that surrounds me, but this was not always the case. I am sure that I am not alone in this endeavor. Many of you have tried or even are trying to study 16 frameworks and 23 libraries in a week and roll out six projects in one night. Where does this come from? On the one hand, it is intuitively clear that, if one does not keep pace with new technologies, one can become unclaimed. So perhaps all of us are driven by fear. But on the other hand, ask yourself the question: is it really so? Will the guys remain without knowledge of the webpack, for example, or isomorphic rendering out of work? After all, the irony of racing for technology lies in the fact that you can run into the framework everyone is talking about, start studying it, kill twenty nights and wake up one day with the release of a new one that is incompatible with the reverse version of the same framework. Moreover, this version will be with a new syntax, terms and a completely different approach.


We all know this story either from our own experience or from other people's stories. We begin to say: “You will not hijack technologies for technology”, “It’s fashionable today, tomorrow is no longer” or “As long as I deal with this library, seven more will be released”. However, even knowing that this will happen, we still hurry to assemble a new project on fashionable tools, at least in the sandbox, in order to get rid of the fear that we are in the wrong topic. I don’t want to say that learning new is bad! But what exactly to learn? How much time to spend? In other words, how to stay in demand by a frontend developer so as not to die from lack of sleep and stress by the age of 30?
')
Most recently, I came to the conclusion that life in the format of night coding and round-the-clock work on the study of technology is not life. He brings health, sooner or later he gets depressed, and the worst thing is that you start to think that you are failing anything, and as a developer you are, in principle, so-so. This is called frustration. Familiar? But its main reason lies in the banal fatigue. Therefore, in my life there was a limited time to work. It is constantly trying to break out of the frame and capture all my life, but I hold on. It is for these reasons that the report of Denis Mishunov called “Debugger” hooked me up.



First of all, Denis pointed out a symptom by which this “disease” can be revealed in himself, by giving an elementary example. So, you came to the conference, where three interesting reports are read at the same moment, and you do not know where to go. And when you have already chosen - you think: what if there, on another report, the information is more important ... Familiar situation? I laughed heartily, because the example got to the point.

Denis noted that the usual frustration of many people actually prevents the brain from studying new information. The theme of perfectionism (without which we do not live at all) was revealed on the fact from the biography of Henry Ford, who once listened to the words of his assistant and decided to release a non-ideal (according to Ford) machine. As a result, it is this key decision that made him a world-famous and extremely rich man. Another example is a letter from Harvard University with the headline “ Slow down ” (“ Slow down the pace”), in which students were urged not to get killed while studying information, and not to strive to put two or even three years of study in one.

It was the only non-technical report at the conference which, having sounded at the very end of the event, stood out the most. I am sure that soon he will appear on the web. Be sure to look at it and think: are you doing the right thing? Maybe night sleep? Or do you think that sleep is for wimps?

The following two reports I combined for myself, since they overlap with each other and solve one problem: transportation. Here you can argue (where without it), but, looking ahead, I will inform you that the authors themselves partly agreed with me.

The bottom line is that web development is becoming more complex with each passing day, if not every hour. There are more and more components and, as a result, issues of communication between them. The problem of creating a plug-in for debugging an assembly or a product in which you need to conduct transactions between the server and the client is becoming more acute. We need to cover more and more cases and solve more and more problems that we hadn’t even suspected before. The ways out of this difficult situation were described in the reports of Roma Dvornov about Rempl and Andrey Sitnik about Logux.



Rempl (remote platform) is a platform for controlled remote access to a JavaScript runtime using the UI. If it is more clear, it is a set of all the most necessary, which simplifies the creation of remote tools. The interface of such tools can be launched both in the plugin for Chrome, and in a separate tab or in the plugin for the editor. The possibilities of using Rempl simply explode the brain - from tools, libraries and frameworks to "crazy" ideas like a simple file sharing service. Colleagues from Avito created Rempl, solving their problems, but decided to share the best practices with everyone. Now, instead of suffering with infrastructure problems, we immediately think what can be done by having remote access to one JavaScript runtime from another via the user interface. Some parts of the platform are still in development, but now the guys are inviting everyone to take part in the life of the opensource project and make their fantasies come true. And I urge you to do the same!



Logux is a transport that synchronizes the state of data on the server and client and thus solves the problem of the user's loss of the Internet. The name of the technology may seem consonant with Redux, and this is not an accident. Logux is a kind of union between Redux and Swarm.js. The first part of the Logux name reflects the approach to data synchronization - through logs. For example, if you were in the forest, mountains or on an uninhabited island and sent a comment for a photo with a cat, then when you appear on the Web, it will chronologically be exactly where it should have been when you clicked the "send" button. Logs on the server and client are synchronized in time. Andrew noted that the technology is still raw, and the finished version will be provided immediately with recommendations for use and best practices. Despite the difference between the two technologies, Rempl and Logux, agree: they really overlap, solving the problems of complex communications.



The last report I want to talk about (“Web Mutation”) was presented by Pavel Kondratenko. In particular, he talked about the ways in which Lenta.ru keeps users on the site: about push notifications, AMP (js-library from Google to speed up web pages on mobile devices, which also contributes to their indexing) and ... about tic-tac-toe. Yes, it is about tic-tac-toe. The mini-game opens if the user has already been on the Lenta.ru page from the phone, but the Internet has disappeared. Now the reader no longer closes the page, but remains on it and plays tic-tac-toe. Cool? Very cool. You can jerk right now and check that this is so. The only negative - the option works only for smartphones on Android. The question "why?" I suggest to ask Paul personally. As for push-notifications, they are new to the modern market and are just beginning to attract the attention of the business. Meanwhile, as the experience of Lenta.ru shows, the number of visits to the site’s pages after using notifications has increased by 2%.

These are the four reports that I decided to single out from the entire conference. Again, this does not mean that the rest were boring or unimportant! At HolyJS Mosow there was a huge amount of interesting information that was presented by excellent English and Russian speakers. Separately, I would like to note the excellent sound and gifts like chocolate from HolyJS (for the brain to work better) or my new Hoodie with the word “JavaScript” (so that now it’s clear that I’m a web developer). Finally, it is impossible not to mention the platform for holivars after the speeches, which was not empty for a minute, and, of course, afterparty with sincere conversations about technology and communication with speakers. I can say with confidence that with each such conference we are getting closer and closer to the European developer community.

In conclusion. At the event, I met colleagues from my previous place of work, who themselves are already working in other companies. We exchanged news and warm memories. I also saw friends from past conferences, established new connections, made friends with excellent developers, was inspired by new achievements and was just happy that I was part of this large community. Should I attend such events and parties as HolyJS Moscow? Sure yes! Because only here you can not only meet your old acquaintances or get acquainted with future friends-like-minded colleagues, but also gain knowledge and inspiration to create truly cool things!

PS Do you know the worst thing? After the conference, or rather after Denis’s closing report on the need to slow down, I spent half the night at the computer, sorting out everything heard on the Internet and studying the documentation ... I am sure that I was not alone in that! Still, we are incurable: we are developers.