HalfStack Online 2 includes at least 19 sessions plus Q&A, interludes, and interactive fun. Sessions focus on things that use the JS and web platform to express creativity, e.g. music, art, VR, thought computing, robots, games, poetry, comedy, etc. HalfStack Online 2 will have JS-related music interludes, brief live chats with some of the speakers, and more fun throughout the day.
HalfStack Online 2 spans many time zones so everyone in the world can attend live for some portion of the event, and then watch the rest after the event. We expect most people will not attend the entire event live, but everyone can attend at least part of the event live and be part of the community. Preliminary speaker information will be updated regularly.
Approximate start and end times by location:
Shape recognition API can drastically improve faces and barcode detection so widely used on social networks and e-commerce. But it also could create great description for images to help people with low-vision understand the context better! In this talk, we'll take a look over this API and make a few experiments with a screen reader to see how it could work.
Uprooting our coding study group to a remote, online format has had its spooky challenges. Coming to terms with the fact that we behave and interact in a fundamentally different way on video (or other!) chat has motivated me to explore other methods of continuing to foster a community with an emphasis on curiosity.
This talk aims to detail the ghastly journey taken in moving our coding study group to a remote format, what we've learned from others trying the same, and how you can create (or participate in!) your own, without having to lose your head!
This is a tale as old as time. Evil spirits have always tried and many times succeeded in haunting our software, riddling it with bugs and creating paranormal behaviour, decreasing performance and shattering our nerves. But fret not! Our ancestors have collected powerful spells and potion recipes in a grimoire that they now have entrusted to our care. Today we want to share with you the secrets this book holds and help you get rid of those gremlins once and for all by utilising the power of testing.
Gant has a confession, he likes watching robots fail. He enjoys writing programs and creating hardware that does something silly. Now, Robots are getting smarter and AI is an exploding field. But that doesn't stop Gant from applying AI to do silly things. Sure, you can go get a Ph.D, but Gant has noticed most PhD students can't deliver, and especially WON'T deliver his terrible ideas. Let's see how AI handles his ridiculous requests. We'll review some silly AI powered concepts and the failures along the way. Gant wants to make AI approachable by keeping the math low, and the fun high.
Enjoy an incredible live coding + music performance with Mynah Marie!
Sam currently works from home full-time with a poor internet connection. Sam disables his video and avoids sharing his screen wherever possible. However, what happens when he needs to present something to his team? His colleagues get a pixelated presentation. The UX designer in him thinks this is less than ideal. He spends considerable time putting presentations together and they deserve a proper delivery. Sam started to wonder if there was a better way to deliver slide decks — one that didn’t involve sharing his screen.
Building REST APIs doesn’t have to be a big trick. Let’s make it a treat while we create a POST function In under 30 lines of code. We’ll build an HTTP function to POST data to our candy database. Using Realtime APIs, we’ll create our candy basket that automatically updates with database hooks every time a new candy is posted in our basket. Get ready to trick or treat with APIs!
The details of Ken's session will be revealed soon.
Details of this festive session will be revealed on the day of the event.
Design tools are fast and amazing tools for thought, but for a host of reasons are limited to creating drawings rather than production assets. Developers must instead re-create surfaces from scratch, by hand, using code (often heavily using tools like the Devtools CSS inspector, the closest thing developers have to a design tool). This inevitably leads to discrepancies and back-and-forth with the design team, and ultimately two sources of truth that are never truly in sync. We'll survey some design/dev tools attempting to bridge this gap
As expected, the code I just wrote doesn’t work. I will reshape it as I stumble across compilation errors and unexpected behaviors, or worse still, after I have deployed it. In both cases, this is debugging.
Debugging is a major task for every software engineer. It can represent as much time as conception and development combined (see “Quantify the time and cost saved using reversible debuggers” from the University of Cambridge). However, developers tend to learn how to debug on the spot, without any underlying theory or structured thinking. Many talks deal with tools and best practices to develop more efficiently, here we will learn how to repair code faster.
Our friends at JS Party will share their latest JavaScript game show adventure.
We've been discussing the role of front end developers for quite some while now and when you ask five people you get eight or more definitions what "good" development is. One thing we keep forgetting is that the platform web moved on and it is actually pretty fun to work with. In this session Chris Heilmann will try to show you some things to spark the "hey, let's build *something*" in you.
The main thread, on the web, has a lot of responsibilities. At the same time, web apps are getting more sophisticated every day. Therefore, the main thread gets too busy that will disappoint our user by showing janky frames! The off-main-thread architecture ensures apps run smoothly on every device for everyone.
A visual and auditory exploration of maps and their impact. An experiment on in how audio can be coupled with map visualizations.
The details of Luis' session will be revealed closer to the event.
The details of this session will be revealed closer to the event.
Inspired by the British TV show Have I Got News For You, Dylan hosts the JavaScript variant, Have I Got Nodes For You.
Tony has many talents and is known for his Beats, Rhymes, and Unit Tests, combining speech recognition and live rapping for hilarity and fun. Tony will be part of the HalfStack Online team interviewing our incredible speakers.
Dylan is the organizer of HalfStack and co-creator of Dojo. Dylan will introduce the speakers, keep the fun going, and create random video interludes.