Web Directions Code Leaders 2017 Leading Engineering Teams

The landscape of JavaScript seems to be in constant flux. Not just the frameworks and build tools we use, but the very language itself now that new versions are being released annually. But where is it at right now, in 2017? And where is it headed in the near future? What changes will most impact the way you work in the coming years? How can you get involved in the process?

The core technologies of the Web: HTML, CSS, SVG and the DOM APIs always have a hot new thing, something coming soon that will change everything. That is as true today as it was 20 years ago. But sometimes, these hot things look sort of familiar. And other times, a particular technology takes decades to finally become mainstream and reliable. Why is that, and are we condemned to reinvent the wheel constantly? Drawing on his role as W3C Strategy Specialist on the Core Web, as well as two decades of Web standardization experience, Chris Lilley will take us on a tour of the past, present and future of the core Web Platform.

After serving us incredibly well for decades, the underlying transport mechanisms of the web, including HTTP and TCP, are being overhauled. In this session, Andrew Betts looks at the evolution of these largely out-of-sight but incredibly important protocols, with huge implications for performance and security, as they are being brought up to date for today's web.

What is the architecture of complex Web Apps? Few apps work at the scale of Twitter, with hundreds of millions of users, and billions of messages a month. Their Web App continues to be very widely used, and was recently completely rebuilt as a Progressive Web App, to take advantage of offline capabilities, notifications, and the native-like experience Web Apps can enjoy on Android, while still meeting the needs of its users on other platforms from a single code base. Hear about the architecture, and lessons learned building the modestly named "Twitter Lite".

Many companies say they want the best developers. But they don’t back that up with their actions. Facebook has invested heavily in designing a culture that grows developers over many years. In this session, Josh, now back in Australia managing a team at the ABC, shares lessons he learned working for Facebook, a company renowned for their engineering prowess, producing such widely used open source technologies as React and GraphQL despite growing its engineering head count at an almost unimaginable rate over the last decade.

We've all been on the other side of the table. A laundry list of required technologies and practices, white boarding code, logic puzzles, folks "hiring for culture fit". But do these practices ensure the best possible hires, and ultimately the best performing teams? Or are we cargo-culting our way to teams of people who look surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) similar? Can we develop a better hiring process and policies to help produce better teams? Elle Meredith and Lachlan Hardy have run teams, and hired developers, all over the world. They've worked with globally recongnised names to help them improve their processes, and we're privileged to hear their lessons.