Recently two of our developers, Brad Griffith and Jonathan Belcher, attended the Mid-Atlantic Developer Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. The conference is “designed to bring programmers from the region together, regardless of their choice of platform, for two full days of learning and community building”. We were excited to be able to show up, learn, connect, and share during the course of the two days. In the spirit of our creed’s “I will never stop learning” opening line, we were particularly keen to see what others had to teach us since the conference was not dedicated to any particular language, platform, or technology. Here’s some of the sessions that Jonathan and Brad enjoyed:

We were lucky to be able to share our own insights with those there as Brad gave a session on “Strategically Reusing Code”. Because we love to open source our work, we wanted to be sure to share links to Brad’s slides so you can learn from the comfort of wherever you might be in the world: 

Brad’s talk looks at how changes in the JavaScript and open source ecosystems can influence your decisions about which libraries, languages and platforms to adopt.  In the early days of the web, developers used libraries and tools to make JavaScript behave more like classical object-oriented languages and to isolate themselves from wildly incompatible proprietary browser platforms.  As JavaScript matured, developers began embracing it enthusiastically. Now, rather than attempting to isolate themselves from JavaScript, developers have embraced it in many contexts outside the browser, including on the server and in cross-platform mobile tools like React Native and Cordova.  

To those we had the chance to talk to at the conference, thanks for spending time with us!