Uberconf 2

Today I did 5 back-to-back sessions with Venkat Subramaniam.  If you've never had the pleasure, he is a high-energy and fun presenter who seems to have mastered quite a wide range of software development topics.

Exploring Modern Javascript

This was a fast and fun presentation.  I'm up to speed enough on JavaScript that I was able to keep up and complete the labs in time.  Modern JavaScript has map, reduce and filter, cool.  I got a little more practice with Visual Studio Code.  Venkat was going pretty fast and asked us to take a short break and even so, he just barely finished, so this might be a longer session that was trimmed to 3 hours.

Creating React Applications

I didn't fare quite so well on this one.  Why do they schedule presentations during nap time?  Also, I really could have benefited from spending a couple of hours doing the React 'hello world' exercises beforehand, the way I did with Vue.  Venkat was still zooming through the material like the Energizer Bunny.  When we got to the first exercise I found myself just staring at an empty JavaScript file without a clue.  I finished up the lab at dinner (with the benefit of having the solutions in front of me).  This wasn't a total loss but I definitely could have gotten more out of it.

Taking polyglot programming to the next level with GraalVM

This is a very cool and promising new technology.  I didn't have any trouble bringing up "hello world" using the GraalVM javac and java and building the insanely fast native image.  Being able to debug other languages in Chrome DevTools is another cool feature.

A fire alarm livened up one of the afternoon sessions.  Never a dull moment at Uberconf!

Panel discussion

One of the better questions was 'What strongly held opinion have you done a 180 on?'  Several speakers had responses along the lines of 'I used to think it was all about technical talent and skill, but now I realize relationships, collaboration and soft skills are more important.'  One panelist said he had pulled a 180 on Microsoft ('I used to be an irritatingly passionate Apple fanboy').

Here are some of the books mentioned by the panelists:

• Delta-V by Daniel Suarez
• You Are Not A Gadget by Jaron Lanier
• Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence by Richard Yonck
• Thinking Machines: The Quest for Artificial Intelligence--And Where It's Taking Us Next by Luke Dormehl
• The Broken Earth Trilogy by N K Jemisin
• The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

There was an amusing moment where several of the panelists were describing their awkward manual systems (e.g. spreadsheets) for keeping track of books they want to read, books they have read, etc.  There was a barely audible comment from Brian Sletten 'goodreads.com'.  Goodreads is an awesome tool to manage your reading and share ratings and reviews with your friends about books you have read that I have been using since 2012 or so.  Be my goodreads friend.