This week I read a tweet that really resonated with me:
I'd love to see more conference talks around how to work with real life code. Tools and tips and tricks on refactoring and understanding.
— Jon Kuperman (@jkup) March 24, 2016
I totally agree.
However, this applies beyond coding. I’d like to see more examples of tech being put to use on real projects. It’s cool to look at what’s new in tech – but to me, it’s even cooler to think of real-life examples where a specific piece of tech has added value that would have been a lot tougher – or impossible – with another tech choice.
Rather than talks or blog posts along the lines of “How we built a website in AngularJS”, how about why you used AngularJS? How about whether a framework has been a huge asset in the early stages of building an application, but it’s caused difficulties later on? How about moving between JS frameworks? How about tales from teams who have inherited bad codebases and gradually improved them? Or tips from developers who stay in jobs for a few years and have consolidated tools or reduced technical debt?
I’m sure there are plenty of these talks and blog posts around. I’d just like to see a little less of “here’s a new tool!” and a little more of “here’s how to get more out of your existing setup”.