The second day of @media Ajax certainly kicked things up a notch. While day one covered a lot of the day-to-day questions of JavaScript that I could relate to, day two was a trip to the future.
The tone was set in an opening keynote by Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, giving us the lowdown on JavaScript 2. I last saw Brendan speak at XTech 2006 in Amsterdam. Back then he was telling us what was coming; here he was showing us what’s arrived. I understood about 50% of what he showed us, which I thought reflected well on Brendan’s explanatory prowess.
John Resig, creator of jQuery, gave a rundown of his library, focusing on prototyping. By taking questions throughout—and responding to all of them thoroughly—it was clear that he wasn’t giving a canned demo; he could have happily talked for an hour about any aspect of coding with jQuery. A lot of people in the room were already using jQuery and, by the time John finished, I suspect a lot more are going to investigate it. I picked up some nifty tips and tricks for myself.
Dan took to the stage and invited us on a mind-bending journey into the depths of metaprogramming. I always knew that JavaScript was a very flexible and adaptable language but Dan really showed just how malleable it could be. But, as Dan pointed out, the best way to really get your head around this stuff is to code it for yourself.
Alex Russell of Dojo fame was up next but instead of just diving into his library, he painted a much broader picture. From my own conversations with Alex, I had a feeling that he would be a great speaker and he was. He began by applying Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to applications and took us forward in time to a Web of the future that’s being hacked together today. I didn’t agree with everything he had to say but boy, did I ever enjoy listening to him say it!
Then it was the turn of Douglas Crockford who had earlier been compared to both Yoda and Gandalf by Brendan. Douglas covered some of the same territory as Dan, demonstrating the flexibility of JavaScript as well as showing its weaknesses. He also expressed his concerns about the direction that JavaScript 2 is headed.
All of that set the scene nicely for a lively closing panel.
As always, I really enjoyed moderating but I definitely felt a bit of my depth. The panel consisted of:
- Brendan Eich,
- Douglas Crockford,
- Alex Russell and
- Stuart Langridge.
They were a little reticent at first but once the subject matter got on to the burning issues like security, the conversation took off. Highlights included Alex bitchslapping Yahoo for not being truly open source with YUI and Douglas declaring that CSS is inherently shit.
All in all, I think it was a good way to wrap up a really good conference. I was very impressed with the level of presentations and the audience interaction. The two-day schedule was clearly very well thought-out. Perhaps the Ajaxians should have been on day two and John could have been on day one but that’s a minor quibble. Overall, @media Ajax was pretty darn great.
Posted by Jeremy on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 1:56am
Comments
I wish I could attend the conference myself. Well, it’s always nice to read someone else’s though on the events. Especially Dan Webb’s contribution must have been interesting.
# Posted by John Yellow on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 8:09pm
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