React Finland

Look, we made it to the photo by Nick Tulinen

To get idea into how people are using React, I wanted to have a session about case studies. In the end, the session was more mixed than that but despite this, it turned out well.

Kadi Kraman  —  All aboard the type train#

I was skeptical of TypeScript for years. It was only last year that I began to see the value of it although I can see it’s not a complete solution. I think what happened is that it opened the eyes of many developers to the value of typing. For me, it was a welcome return to thinking in types as I did in the beginning of my career with C.

In her talk, Kadi Kraman discusses the typing and why you might want to adopt it in your codebase. You’ll also learn about the differences in type systems.

• To hear Kadi’s thoughts about the topic, go to 27:45 at the podcast.
• pdf slides

Glenn Reyes  —  Drawing the line between 3rd party and handcrafted components#

When developing, you often have to make a call between developing something on your own versus consuming what you need from a 3rd party source such as npm. Both approaches have their pros and cons. It’s this topic into which Glenn Reyes delves into in his his talk.

• To hear Glenn’s thoughts on the topic, go to 40:02 at the podcast.
• Online slides
• pdf slides

Dustin Schau  —  Gatsby + Themes: The Future of Gatsby#

Gatsby, a static site generator, took the world of web development by storm. It has become popular especially in the React community and it’s still growing. One of the upcoming features is what they call themes.

A theme is an entity that encapsulates a portion of a Gatsby site. In his talk, Dustin shows how the new feature works while applying it against React Finland site!

• Online slides
• pdf slides

Conclusion#

For me, typing and especially thinking in types has a lot of value during development. Sometimes having the right data model can save a lot of effort and even enable features that might be otherwise complicated to pull off.

Choosing whether to develop or to consume is another important aspect of development. Knowing when to push for your own solution, or to fork an existing one, is a good skill to have.

When it comes to Gatsby, it’s great to see a new way to extend it in the form of themes. Despite the term, themes go far beyond user interface and I’m sure many Gatsby users will find the new feature valuable.