Top 5 Takeaways from meet.js Summit ‘17
Meet.js Summit is an annual gathering for meet.js groups operating in many local meetups in the country. I’ve really enjoyed this edition — speakers presented interesting insights, the atmosphere was great, and sponsors prepared a lot of attractions and competitions.
This year course was especially aimed at web performance and React — the most popular library for rendering display in applications. For those of you, who couldn’t be there I’ve chosen the most interesting talks and summarized them below.
Check it out! Maybe next year you will think about going there yourself?
1. Load it faster
The first shot about performance in React was an awesome initiation of the conference. Tomek showed us some basic techniques like code coverage, gzipping and babel-minify. That was only a tip of the iceberg because then he directed us deeper into JavaScript with tips like using “babel-plugin-transform-react-remove-prop-types”, “babel-react-optimize” or “react-addons-perf”.
The solution for faster rendering seems to be this very universal motto: “Render as little as possible” and for React-interested devs, valuable tip will be using “shouldComponentUpdate()” and pure component with immutable data. You can also use “react-code-splitting” and “react-loadable” for more dynamic import.
2. Fun & Games with A-Frame
Certainly the most innovative subject at the conference. Andrzej had accustomed us to various subjects concerning game development before, so this time was no different. He showed us how to bite WebVR with progressive enhancement. If you are looking for articles about that subject, you should check webvr.rocks and aframe.io sites. A lot of examples like “A-Painter”, “A-Blast”, “A Saturday Night” were presented with aframe.io/blog.
If you are thinking about participating in JS13KGames, that subpage will probably interest you: JS13KGames.com/aframe.
3. React Recompose
What is React Recompose? Bartosz explained us more about this utility for writing the clean code. It also helps in HoC (Higher order components).
The philosophy is simple: use functional wrappers which helps in re-render optimization. If you know the comparison “RxJS is async Lodash for JS”, meet the newest one then: “Recompose for React is like Lodash for JS”.
4. GraphQL and Apollo
Anna told us about the query language from Facebook fellows and the way to keep a simple schema, API contract and better sync with smaller payloads and evolving APIs. The technology provides nested queries, mutations, variables and subscriptions which are similar to queries.
Apollo is a client for JS which guarantees cache, integrate with popular render libraries and have an “Optimistic UI” for easy operations management. Integration with React is very easy. Apollo server gives us the same schema, resolvers and various data sources e.g.: REST, MongoDB etc.
5. Demystifying Vue.JS
In this section of the conference, all issues regarding the advantages of the Vue.JS were portrayed by Damian. Starting with fiber improving performance supported by reducing re-renders with templates and mutable states. In comparison with templates vs JSX we have hoisting static sub trees, event modifiers and we can use the favorite preprocessor and the existing code as a template. The Vuex is a redux-like state management and is supported by similar DevTools plugin for Vue.JS called Vue-DevTools. Next advantages are: simple use of async components (code splitting), hot reload, custom blocks in HTML, CSS modules, Linting.
These were the talks that have inspired me the most but it’s just a part of the conference! The speakers presented many important and up-to-date topics and general level of talks was very high. It was great to see leading figures of Polish JS scene and learn from their vast experience. I would say that the conference was really well organized and could be considered as a world-class event.
Hope to see you there next year!
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