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Notes from #12Devs October

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Life behind the curve: @westleyknight

  • http://uptodate.frontendrescue.org/
  • backlog takes way too long to go through
  • bepressing: you can get threatened by the knowledge of others
    • pressure to learn
    • you don't have to feel this way
  • it's time for someone else to do the hard work, accept that other people do and learn from their findings / fork their code
  • "For after all, the best thing on can do when it's raining, is let it rain"
  • 4 step approach
    • only learn what you need
    • keep it relevant (don't cram things in for the sake of it)
    • build an archive (useful things to search later)
    • take advice with a pinch of salt

Node.js - what is and why do? @adamyeats

  • JSis fun and works in lots of places
  • "Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually written in JavaScript"
  • can do front and backend with only one language
  • "Asynchronicity"
  • handles the event loop well by sticking and blocking i/o into a queue and carrying on
  • NPMallows for simply requiring a module for something to work. Hugely reusable - "there's a module for that"
  • super active community
  • http://nodejs.org/ | http://nodeschool.io/ | http://jsforcats.com/

The internet is real anyway @katskii

  • "It's not real life, it's only the internet" - No!
  • UI!==UX
  • moving away from just making internet things look like real life
  • analytics is not a million miles away from people watching
  • get to know your users "intimately" - then get to know your product better
  • don't be afraid to question why you're doing something
  • "If everything is important, then nothing is"
  • Internet=Life

Digital feudalism and how to avoid it @aral

  • our devices give us superpowers, they extend our biological abilities
  • today we are cyborgs, we have technologies which extend our biological abilities
  • "User experience is about control and focus" - if you control all of the elements, you control the user experience
  • two individual elements can be great, but totally fail if nobody considers the experience as a whole
  • when a new feature comes in, evaluate how it affects the experience as a whole
  • "The age of features is dead, we are living in the age of experiences"
  • http://thelink.is/uxtalk/
  • "Terms and Conditions may apply"
  • if you're evaluating a new technology, live with it for a week
  • design it not a democracy, it's about saying 'no', repeatedly