[Talk] Falling in Love with Vanilla JS (Again)

[theonesean]

Chinatown.js Talk Submission

Talk Title: Falling in Love with Vanilla JS (Again), or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the DOM

Talk Description:

The shortcomings of Javascript as a language for front-end development are obvious -- why else would developers create libraries and frameworks to fix fundamental parts of the language and its ergonomics, from jQuery to JSX? Indeed, when was the last time you wrote more than a few lines of front-end JS?

This talk is not a screed against frameworks. but rather a loving paean to the beauty and simplicity of writing real Javascript again. After two years leading a dev team whose primary front-end language is Vanilla JS (no frameworks, no bundlers, barely even a package manager), I've realized a few things: the core APIs have evolved to make it possible to write good code and enjoy doing it without the need for the added abstraction of React. Web Components make it possible to build modularly and reuse code. And while there are parts of the ecosystem that are still janky, I will argue that nothing is more futureproof than plain old JS.

Name: Sean Bailey

Pronouns: he/they

Twitter Handle (optional): @theonesean

Website (optional): spb.li