November 21 was the largest conference in Central and Eastern Europe regarding Angular – NG Poland. Organized for several years, it attracted crowds of fans of this framework. And they should not be surprised – many great presenters were invited, such as Minko Gechev, Todd Motto or Michael Hladky. It was also my first Angular conference in my life. That is why I would like to share my impressions.
As planned, the presenters had 20 minutes to present their topic. 20 minutes is not much, but enough to convey the main idea. The motivation behind this decision was clear – to inspire people with specific issues. I liked this approach because if a particular topic didn’t interest anyone, it only waited 20 minutes for the next speech. Unfortunately, as is usually the case with a tight schedule and a small amount of time, not every presenter fit in the designated time, which resulted in a growing delay, but in the end, it was marginally small. It is somewhat thanks to the absent presenters: Samantha Brennan and Bonnie Brennan. During the conference there was also a change – the previously announced Stanimera Vlaeva was replaced by Łukasz Kokoszka and Rafał Brzoska. Great respect for them that they decided to take the challenge!
It is worth mentioning the place where the conference took place – it was the Multikino room located in the Złote Tarasy gallery, which in turn is well connected due to the proximity of the Central Station. Anyone who wanted to stretch their legs during breaks could walk freely.
The theme of the conference was the movie Terminator, which is why the introduction could not miss frames from the cult series and, finally, the projection of the latest movie Terminator: Dark Fate. Then we went to the specifics – speakers’ speeches. Due to such a large number of speeches, let me present only selected ones that I have chosen subjectively.
The post-Ivy World – Minko Gechev
Angular version 9 is fast approaching, so there could not be missing the topic related to the new compiler – Ivy. Minko presented how Angular currently compiles a component using View Engine, eventually generating 5 files per component:
- comp.ngfactory.js,
- comp.metadata.json,
- comp.component.js,
- comp.component.d.ts,
- comp.ngsummary.json.
Thanks to Ivy, component instatiation is simplified and the number of files is reduced to 2:
- comp.component.js,
- comp.component.d.ts,
which means that the bundle size of the application decreases significantly!
The most important information that was given during the speech concerned the release date of the new version – it will take place already in December this year! What’s more, from this moment the libraries will migrate to Ivy. In version 10, libraries are to start using the new compiler, while from version 11 ngcc (Angular Ivy Compatibility Compiler) is to be only as a backup.
The full presentation can be found at this link.
Practice makes perfect – when it comes to RxJS – Jan-Niklas Wortmann
“Observables don’t cause problems. Establishing a reactive mindset does!” – this is Niklas’s opinion on the subject RxJS, and he knows what he says because he belongs to the team developing the most popular library for creating reactive code. Reactive programming requires a change of approach to problem-solving and the need for time and, above all, practice to reach the level of free use of the library. That is why Niklas did live coding, creating a carousel whose images can be changed by swipe or arrow keys. Of course in a purely reactive way, using RxJS! If you’re interested in presentations, be sure to check out here.
Saving the world, one line at a time – Asim Hussain
Do you know what is a green web application? Well? Then you must get to know to Asim Hussain’s presentation! It was not a technical read – but undoubtedly inspirational. When developing the application, we focus on making our solutions as cheap as possible, as fast as possible, so that the application is as small as possible. Have we ever thought about how it affects the environment and are our solutions eco? This problem is outlined by Asim in his speech, presenting how many species will lose more than half of their climatic range if the average rate of temperature increase is 1.5 ° C per year, 2 ° C and 4.5 ° C. And what can we do to stay within this growth rate? It turns out that a very hard road ahead – we would have to completely reduce carbon pollution by 2050. We may not be able to achieve this goal, but each of us can reduce emissions by using laptops instead of desktops, using Wi-Fi instead of 3G / 4G networks. Of course, that’s not all, these are just the simplest changes we can make – if you want to learn more, be sure to watch the presentation.
The biggest surprise
For me, the biggest (positive) surprise was the speech of Kamil Gałek. In his presentation, he presented what is happening in the application before angular begins to initialize components. You can find the presentation here. I have to admit that before I had no complete idea about the existence of tokens PLATFORM_INITIALIZER, APP_BOOTSTRAP_LISTENER, or DoBootstrap methods. Despite meeting them for the first time, I was able to understand their purpose and use case – thanks to a great discussion of these issues. I can’t fail to mention Kamil’s presentation – the presentation was conducted maturely and one had the impression that an experienced presenter was performing on the stage, not a person just gaining experience in appearing at such large conferences. I hope that Kamil will not stop at this one conference!
Summary
The NG Poland conference was an organizational masterpiece – with such a large number of presenters, even a small slip-up could thwart the plans of speeches. This did not happen, and the amount of newly acquired knowledge exceeded my expectations! I hope that next year I will be able to go to this conference because I can’t hide – the bar has been set high!