DevSummit 2016: Recap

Ok, so I know I said I would do daily recaps of DevSummit last week, but my days ran longer than expected and I had less time for recaps than I thought.

I already talked about plenary and the vector tiles sessions I did. So I’ll talk a little about my other sessions.

Yann and I did a Discover 4.0 session a couple of times. I think this went over really well. There is a lot of material to cover for what is new to developers in the 4.0 version of the ArcGIS JS API and Yann had even more material to show you. The big takeaways here, Accessors, Collections, Maps and Views, ViewModels and Portal API. Learn those, get intimate with them and you’ll be golden for 4.0.

I also had an Ember session with the JS API. I did the intro here and Frederic drove the demo. I think the point here is that ember-cli can be a very powerful tool for developing applications quickly. There was a good turnout here and some very good questions.

I did an Optimizing and Building JavaScript apps with Lloyd. Lloyd did a great job here of covering the current optimization solutions available to developers. My part was getting deep into the Dojo build tools with the Bower release of the API. Where else are you going to hear about creating profiles for your packages. I thought this went over really well. I felt a little like Frank the Tank in Old School for this session. I just hope I didn’t bombard people with too much info. I know there was a lot to take in.

I really enjoyed the TypeScript session with Dasa. We both had some solid demos showing how you could use TypeScript with the JS API and the TypeScript definition files. I’m a big fan of TypeScript and what it brings to the table. I may not me full blown on using classes, but they are useful. I’m a big fan of not only using interfaces, but being vey explicit with my type aliases. I had really good feedback on this session, so I’m glad people liked it.

Friday, I did my Frameworks session… twice. Before and after the closing session lunch. I ran this one solo. I’m not going to lie, the week was beginning to catch up with me at this point. But I think I kept the energy up and hope that I delivered some concrete samples of using the JS API with just about any framework and tools. There was a lot of material there, lots of code samples, lots of info to absorb. I provided this list as a resource for folks to look over. I got a little excited about Elm in the morning session, but I hope the point I got across is the fact that the API can work in just about any framework or environment.

I should also mention that Douglas Crockford did a really great keynote on Tuesday. I really enjoyed it, especially when he started talking a bit more about some functional JavaScript stuff. I was even lucky enough to sit in on a lunch with him and some other Esri folks that day.

I did get to see a couple of user sessions. I saw Dylans Choosing a Solid JavaScript Application Architecture and Intern session, as well as some the Defend Against the Caveman Coder. All really solid sessions. Dylan knows his shit and he shared some really great info with everyone.

I have to say, I never would have imagined at last years DevSummit that I would be part of the plenary or be doing so many sessions just a year later. I don’t know what’s in store for next year, but I hope to bring even more to the table. I think I could have squeezed in a couple of more sessions, so we’ll see what we can come up with next year!

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback on the plenary, on the sessions and even on my book and this blog and youtube. I’m really happy and appreciative that people get some value from it all. Looking forward to an amazing year folks!