Let’s make this a tradition! I love to watch conference talks. Be it live or on tape. And just like last year I try to collect the talks that I loved most. I know, since I started organising Script I began seeing conference talks differently. However, those are the ones I put my attendee-hat on. And let’s be honest: A good organiser needs to do that! So enjoy my list of talks I enjoyed most in 2016.

Stephen Hay: The back(side) of the class #

I watched Stephen at this year’s Nightly Build and he’s an amazing speaker. And his talk shows us that we tend to overengineer things that don’t need over-engineering. Or engineering at all. Told in a funny way, with lots of jokes and great examples of things that can go wrong. Keep it simple, folks.

Heydon Pickering: Writing less damned code #

I never had the pleasure of seeing one of Heydon’s talks live. Too bad, because his style is just so unique and crazy, python-esque even. In this one, Heydon shows you how to write less code. But not in a software development kind of way, more in “use your freaking mind and think about what you’re doing!”. Which is just great. I nodded, I laughed my ass off, and I show this to every peer.

Alice Bartlett: Can you make it more like Bootstrap? #

Alice Bartlett works for the Financial Times and had the distinct task of creating a pattern library/design system/component framework for … well, all the sites of the FT! I love this talk because it extends the usually pattern library talks by having a use case that is way too common for bigger companies. We ourselves got into a similar situation when we started working on Groundhog, and I learned so much from that talk that shaped the creation of Groundhog tremendously.

Harry Roberts: Refactoring CSS Without Losing Your Mind #

Harry is the guy who single-handedly invented CSS engineering. And with good reason. In this talk, Harry shows how you can refactor CSS. And more importantly: WHY you should refactor CSS. It appears to me Harry is the only one who can apply common software engineering practices to CSS without trying to reinvent everything the language has to offer. This is one of his best talks so far.

Vincent Haupert: Shut up and take my money #

We just don’t care too much about security. This talk by Vincent Haupert from this year’s CCC shows perfectly what can go wrong if you don’t spend resources on making your app secure and thinking about all the things that can go wrong. Usually, security guys can get way too cocky when talking about their hacks, but Vincent manages it to show it in a very toned down and funny way. Watch this. Just go and watch this. And show it to everybody.

Brian Lonsdorf: You are doing it wrong, Underscore! #

Okay, I’m so late to the party for this one. This was actually recorded in 2013, but its contents are still very up to date. I’m digging deeper and deeper into functional programming recently. Mostly because it feels way more natural to me in the environments I work with (Node, for that matter). This one shows you functional programming patterns beyond adding stuff. Actual, real world use cases where we can use currying and high order functions. If you started with functional programming, but want to see the real shit. Go watch this.

Stefan “shameless plug” Baumgartner: HTTP/2 is coming! Unbundle all the things?!? #

Yes. It’s me. Sorry. I didn’t do that many talks this year. Mostly because I don’t have something new to say. One thing that did however took quite some time was the upcoming of HTTP/2. With this talk, I try to show you one distinct feature of HTTP/2, and show you the impact on JavaScript bundling. Tell me what you think!

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