Went to the North Carolina Developers Conference at NC State at Raleigh, NC last weekend. Very edifying.

1. Went to two sessions on Sencha, which is a compelling concept for a few reasons:
2. Using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, can create iOS, Android, other mobile, and desktop/web apps
3. Desktop web and mobile apps can often share model and controller and just offer different views for different user experiences.
4. The fact that it is all generated in JavaScript is a mixed bag to me. On one hand, it’s an interesting idea to move all rendering to the client, only relying on server side technology to supply the data; but on the other, client-side rendering has usually been considered an issue for differently-abled accessibility.

5. The framework is used by such giants as CNN, Cisco, etc.

6. I then went to “Git: Choosing Workflows that Make Sense”, an extended hands-on session on the Git versioning system that was interesting (still not clear on the best workflow for me) and reminded me of many Git subtleties that will be helpful in my day to day versioning. He (Tim Cunningham) has posted to his blog about a workflow I need to look at it closer.
7. Next was “Real Responsive Design”, which took an opposite approach to the “Mobile Revolution” than that of Sencha. The idea here was to have web apps on mobile and desktop and use media queries to deliver appropriate presentation to the user.
8. Next was “Functional Scalability – For The Architect in You”.  Good talk, but was getting mentally saturated. This is from the summary on the ncdevcon site: “This talks focuses on methods/rules, patterns, techniques/tools and the mindset we can apply to achieve scalability. We will also discuss guidelines to determine what is a good balance of performance, scalability & cost.” It was good.

Day 2!

1. Started off with “HTML5 Storage Options” with the legendary (in the CF world) Raymond Camden. There are various technologies being developed and sporadically available for storing file system, sql, and nosql on the client. Started with cookies and worked his way up to more complex and sporadically supported methods. The deal with any of this is as soon as you move to another device, your preferences or what-have-you are gone. I still don’t see any immediate application in my work, but did find one I think is pretty good. I have an eBook I bought on Amazon and when I accessed it yesterday, it asked me if I wanted to download it so I wouldn’t have to go to the server each time and could read it offline. This application makes sense in a per-device setting, as does Mr. Camden’s concept of downloading music and image files for an online game you might play.
2. “Death To Wireframes, Long Live Rapid Prototyping”. Good talk. Basically agreed with (I think) my concept of going from whiteboard to basic functionality, so that your mock-up is essentially your future application. Presenter was Bermon Painter.
3. D3.js is really cool. It’s a fairly low-level data visualization library. At work, I use Highcharts, which is another layer of abstraction above: you can do simple things easier, but it’s harder to completely customize.  That said, it abstracts away a lot of the tedious work and uses “chaining” to great advantage ala jQuery.
4. “Hidden Gems in Browser Tools” was quite eye-opening. As a primarily FireBug guy, I did often realize during the talk, “Oh, Chrome can do that too,” as well as, ” I didn’t realize any browser tool could do that.” Presented by Adam Tuttle
5. Finally, I did “Design Patterns for Everyday Use.” Design patterns are these things I’ve been studying for years and can point to code and say, “Look, I’ve implemented singleton, decorator, etc.,” but there’s always the constant fear that there is a better way to do what you’re doing. More abstraction with out sacrificing extensibility or something.

So, a lot of excellent sessions. The immediate take-ways for me are the browser tools, git, and (something not explicitly mentioned in the sessions I mentioned) Sass or some other CSS preprocessor. Talked to a lot of good people too. Good times.

Videos!

I’d like to thank my employer, Indiana University, and my department, University Institutional Research and Reporting for sending me to the conference.