Why would I ever Elm

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

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...it would be nice to have one who questioned their own thoughts
- Joshua Hawxwell

This month we are proud to present Josh Hawxwell with a talk on something he is very passionate about: functional programming!

We'll take a look at some of the many things that the term "functional programming" can mean, and to what degree that applies to JavaScript. Then we'll look at how these ideas (which are present in Elm) allow us to easily write safe front-end applications, with comparisons to other frameworks and packages such as React and Redux.

After the talk we'll have a workshop session where attendees will be divided into two groups of AngularJS and React, and discuss the positives and negatives between re-implementations of a simple Elm app in either framework.

We hope to see you there!

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Umbraco CMS + Lean Coffee + Cool Wall

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Join us for an action packed month as we feature a talk on Umbraco CMS, a Lean Coffee, and we see 2018's first edition of the Cool Wall!

We will hear from Paul about how to build websites on the Umbraco framework in headless mode. Paul's a great speaker with extensive experience of content management systems and Umbraco. Through this talk, you can expect to take away the skills and knowledge to get to grips quickly with Umbraco's headless mode in a familiar React setting.

We'll also present an interactive Lean Coffee session where we aim to find out which technologies, speakers and workshops YOU would like to see at NottsJS in 2018.

The ever-popular Cool Wall will see a return for 2018, where we will get the chance to rate the current tech offerings in the form of pseudo-representative fashion labels related to unspecified yet approximate temperature guides - "coolness".

See you there!

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Node JS in the AWS Cloud

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Due to unforeseeable problems, we have had to cancel the Amazon Alexa talk by David Low, and are replacing it with another talk about Node JS in the Cloud. We are looking to reschedule the Amazon Alexa talk for January.

During this session we will aim to build a server-less RESTful API based upon Amazon's AWS cloud technologies.

This is intended as a high-level hands-on session, where you can get exposure to a wide number of intersecting technologies, giving us the opportunity to do a deep dive on each individual component in future sessions.

In this session we will use: Node JS, Lambda, API Gateway, IAM Security & Document DB.

These will be included into a Blue Peter style "here's one I made earlier" React Website to show off the capabilities.

If you are planning on joining in then please register for an Amazon AWS account BEFORE the event. Amazon offer a 12 month free tier which will cover your needs, but you will need to supply payment details.

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Being Asynchronous

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Dot catch! Dot catch!
- David Wood

Many of us know about the benefits of offloading concurrent I/O operations through the use of callbacks, libraries such as async and bluebird, or using the new Promise support in browsers and Node.js. But, do you know how these work, and when you should use them?

In this talk we will review the benefits, pitfalls, and ways to implement concurrent JavaScript code in Node.js and the browser. We'll look at the support for async/await, how this differs from callbacks and asynchronous libraries, and take a brief look at how these have been implemented to gain a better understanding of what's going on under the hood.

At the end of this talk you will be able to make more informed decisions about the use of synchronous API methods such as readFileSync, choosing to listen to error events, and why wrapping function calls in try..catch may or may not be useful.

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Hands on with React.Native

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Is this thing on?
- Chris Kemp

Come see how you can make mobile apps with javascript using React.Native, facebook's framework for building mobile apps.

This will be a hands-on workshop, where Windows users can create an Android App, and Mac users get to choose Android or iPhone.

https://facebook.github.io/react-native/

You will need Android studio or xcode installed to get the simulators up and running.

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Machine Learning for Muggles

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Please join NottsJS and Martin Kearn for "Machine Learning for Muggles".

Artificial Intelligence is the latest hotness. Machine Learning sits behind artificial intelligence and on the surface it may seem like a deeply technical, scientific topic. We are here to tell you that it is more accessible than you think. We’ll look at some of the basics around the Azure Machine Learning service. We’ll also look some of the Microsoft Cognitive Services APIs which make it very easy to implement artificial intelligence ‘smarts’ into your application with simple, standard REST calls via any programming language or platform, including JavaScript.

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Chat Bots

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

Join us with our guest speaker Manthan Dave with his talk: "Up and running with chat bots: A journey from being a noob to being awesome"

The chat bot revolution is upon us and every developer wants to build one. This workshop will take them on an epic journey starting from basics and writing a simple chat bot, all the way to learning advanced concepts.

Ever wondered what goes behind a good chat bot? Do you want to build one? Well this workshop is for you!

Complexity can be diffused as soon as you peek behind the curtain. A chat bot, like a website might look complex from the outside, but the reality is different.

This workshop will be divided into three sections. The first section will cover the basic anatomy of a chat bot. Next, we'll work together to build a chat bot. We'll start simple with a chat bot that'll tell us knock knock and chuck norris jokes. Towards the end of the workshop, we'll go over some advanced concepts that can help us scale our chat bot to have more features.

So come! Join us on an awesome journey to talkify our bots!

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Firefox Containers, isolating the web whilst hacking web extensions

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Presenting Jonathan Kingston with his talk and workshop: "Firefox Containers, isolating the web whilst hacking web extensions".

Bring your laptops with a copy of Firefox Nightly installed as we will hack away at building your own extensions using bleeding edge features.

Firefox Containers tabs are an experimental platform feature for tab management and isolating browsing to solve security and privacy issues.

With the recent launch of containers to test pilot, I'm going to walk through how they are built. Web Extensions are the new cross browser way of adding features to the browser built entirely from JavaScript and other web technologies. New web extension features were added to Firefox for building our containers experiment that you can use today.

I will cover the basics of building extensions so we can have half the evening on hacking and making extensions.

Image credit: Carolyn Jaeger

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Hands on with React

Tuesday, March 14th, 2017

Don't point that thing at me.
- Chris Kemp

React is currently my favourite JavaScript framework, and I used it recently to create the Notts Dev Workshop website. It led me to the realisation that NottsJS really should be showcasing JavaScript based web development. (I know! Really?!)

Most people don't get to try a new technology in their day-to-day job, so they do it in their spare time. These people then don't get to apply what they've learnt to a real-world problem.

So that's exactly what I you will be doing. My plan is to use slave labour to enable you to build our website.

I will be acting as your customer and will be signing off your final work, so expect me to try to give you a live example of what it means to use this technology in a real setting.

So please join us in building a real-world react website.

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Elm

Tuesday, January 10th, 2017

elm. A delightful language for reliable webapps.
- elm-lang.org

Elm is a domain-specific, purely functional programming language used for declaratively creating client-side web apps which compile to JavaScript.

In this talk you'll be shown The Elm Architecture, a nestable pattern for building applications, and Elm's full type inference system that helps prevent users from running into errors.

We'll look at how Elm handles HTTP requests and websockets, how it handles uncertainty, the use of partial function application for reusable views, interaction with JS libraries, and how data immutability gives you undo/redo for only a few lines of code.

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#NottTechParty - Christmas Party 2016

Thursday, December 8th, 2016

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Nottingham's biggest and brightest tech events are coming together to celebrate the stellar growth of the community by throwing another awesome Christmas party.

We're taking over the National Videogame Arcade, with full access to all the games and exhibits, an organised games tournament with pizza and drinks.

Tickets are just £5! The price of your ticket includes full access to the National Videogame Arcade, the games tournament and pizza.

First tickets released this Friday 11th November at midday - Buy your ticket now!

Javascript Cool Wall

Tuesday, November 8th, 2016

"You're using <insert_old_framework>? That's so 2015. You need to use <insert_new_framework>!"
- Javascript Developers

With something that is approaching attention deficit disorder there's new JavaScript frameworks emerging weekly. Even the godfather of modern JS development, jQuery, has been knocked from its perch and is considered passé.

So what do we do now? How do we leverage the good tech, while avoiding the cargo cults?

This month we're going for something completely new. Enter The Cool Wall. A segment that will prove so popular that Jeremy Clarkson will invent Time Travel to steal it from us and make into a popular segment on Top Gear.

This month's session will be a group discussion piece where we talk about the state of modern JavaScript development and our place in this world.

Exploring Progressive Web Apps

Tuesday, October 11th, 2016

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"The application cache is a douchebag"
- Jake Archibald

Web apps can be pretty cool, but we could be making them even cooler. Browsers are leveling up by adding functionality to enable a user experience akin to using a native mobile application.

Enter the new buzz-phrase of the moment… Progressive Web Apps!

This talk aims to share knowledge gained from Dan's time at FullStack 2016 conference, and the lessons learned from implementing the features into real web applications. The goal is to provide more than just a high level overview; you should be able to walk away confident that you can implement these features into your own web apps straight away.

You'll find out why you should care, what's available, see a demo and see what features are offered in browsers.

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Realtime Apps with Node.js and RethinkDB

Tuesday, September 13th, 2016

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In today's online world, user experience is key. Users expect slick interfaces that are intuitive, informative and engaging. More and more, building apps that update the user in Realtime are becoming an essential part of this experience - and we can see this every day with things like Google Docs, Facebook Notifications, Slack and BBC Live Text.

RethinkDB is a fully featured, opensource, NoSQL database designed to make developing for the Realtime Web easy. We'll talk about changefeeds, clustering and how combining with Node.js can help you avoid some of the pitfalls of building rich, engaging, Realtime Apps to scale and across multiple platforms.

By the end of this talk you'll be ready to go back and create your first Realtime App with RethinkDB and Node.js.

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