Peter Christensen

Surviving the Framework Hype Cycle – Brandon Hays

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I was recommended this 35 minute talk from the Mountain West Ruby 2016 conference, and I wanted to share my notes. It captures feelings I’ve had about the pace of technology change, with the rise of Javascript frameworks over the last 4 years. It’s a useful framework for evaluating new technologies, as well as when is the right time for you to adopt them. FWIW I’m definitely a Settler.

Great talk, Brandon!

Links

Notes

  • Web developer’s career ins entering a mid-life crisis
  • Pain points
    • impossible to keep up with new tools
    • There’s no way new things can live up to your expectations
    • New stacks are less robust and more brittle than older
    • The tech you love is now obsolete – it’s never safe to fall in love
  • Once a tech gains popularity, it doesn’t go away, it just loses popularity
  • The Hype Cycle
    • Technology trigger, early adopters
      • e.g. Rails 5 minute blog video
    • Peak of inflated expectations
      • Promise – this will make you 10x more productive
    • Trough of Disillusionment
      • Prominent defectors – e.g. Zed Shaw “Rails is a Ghetto”
    • Slope of Enlightenment
    • Plateau of Productivity
  • 3 types of users
    • Pioneers – itch for the latest, thrill of discovery
      • Vision/Experiments
    • Settlers – order from chaos, build infrastructure and community, connect with real users and business need
      • Strategy/Synthesis
    • Town Planners – get things done at a scale not possible with unproven tech – turn exciting tech boring
      • Tactics/Execution
  • How to lose at the hype cycle
    • Dismiss new stuff, become commodotized
    • Get caught up in the cycle and burn out
    • Bet and crash with tech that doesn’t clear the trough
  • How to win – depends on your preferences
    • What stage is the tech in? Should I concern myself?
    • Pioneers ride the wave at Peak of Inflated Expectation
    • Settlers start at Trough of Illusionment, full speed at Slope of Enlightement
    • Planners start at Slope of Enlightenment, Plateau of Productivity
  • The Comfort – No one gets to make you feel ashamed for liking the things you like
  • The Caution – There comes a time for you to leave the plateau
  • Recommendation
    • Day job with productivity
    • Side project for fun with less mature technology
  • The real promise is on helping you reach the plateau
    • To focus on things that have real value, business value
    • One the plateau, you have time to think

Javascript Underwater – My JS.Everywhere Talk about OpenROV

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I was invited to speak at the JS.everywhere(2013) conference. This was different from my other talks where I talked about hardware projects. The conference is about inspirational stories of coding and learning, each speaker about a unique topic. My talk is about my love of water and how the OpenROV project lets me express that in code. This version has a lot more words than the one I presented with, so you can read it without hearing me speak. I’ll update this when the videos are posted.

Thanks to the JS.everywhere team and of course to the whole OpenROV team – David Lang, Eric Stackpole, Colin Ho, Brian Adams, and more!

Download presentation (14MB pdf)

Here was a reaction to the talk:

If you’d like to have me present this or similar topic at your event, please email me

UI Beyond the Browser

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I recently presented a talk at HTML5DevConf called “Robots, Circuits, and Drones, Oh My! Javascript for Makers“. It took a slight change from the proposed title, to “UI Beyond the Browser – Software for Hardware Projects”. It’s an evolution of the talk I gave at SpainJS about the exciting changes taking place in hardware development and ways that software developers can dive in and enjoy the fun. I think it was recorded but the videos haven’t been posted yet. I’ll update this page when they are. Video below!

I hope this is helpful to you! Special thanks to everyone that has helped me on my Maker journey so far – Jeff McAlvay and the Tempo Automation team, the OpenROVs, the Upverters, Lady Ada, Parrot for making the awesome AR Drone, Orbotix for making the delightfully magical Sphero, and more. Very special thanks to the organizers of HTML5DevConf for inviting me to speak!

Download presentation (21MB pdf)

If you’d like to have me present this or similar topic at your event, please email me.

Now go, goof around, make something awesome!

Programming The Real World – Presentation Slides

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I recently presented a talk at the Spain.js conference and I spent a long time (a long, long time) making my slides.  Then I realized that while it was a good slide deck for the presentation, it was nearly useless without me accompanying it.  Since the talk was not recorded :(, I reworked the slides completely to serve as a standalone deck.

I hope this is helpful to you! Special thanks to everyone that has helped me on my Maker journey so far – Jeff McAlvay, the OpenROVs, the Upverters, Lady Ada, and more.  Super thanks to the organizers of Spain.js for inviting me to speak and to Manilla for sponsoring my travel.

Download Presentation (17MB pdf)

If you’d like to have me present this or similar topic at your event, please email me

What did people think of the talk?

 

 

 

Enjoy, and go make something!