Simon Stewart

Founder of the JSinSA conference.
I help companies make and execute on great technical decisions.

@simonstewart

Ryan Kotzen

My first memory of a computer is playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on my dad’s old 486 and I’ve been hooked ever since. I joined Entelect fresh out of varsity and 8 years later am still here, enjoying what I love. I have worked across a wide range of domains, from banking to gamified loyalty systems. Originally a .Net developer, I have spent the past 3 years as a full-stack JavaScript developer.Hobbies include Kerbal Space Program, traveling, reading, Warhammer 40k, geeking out with series and movies.

@eXigentCoder

JSinSPACE - JavaScript + electronics + Kerbals = Space? Sometimes ...

Using the game Kerbal Space Program together with a combination of an Arduino, various electronic components, node.js, krpc, johnny-five, Google Protocol buffers, and the secret ingredient, JavaScript, we have been able to successfully send at least 17% of our Kerbals into orbit.

Jake Helme

I got interested in software development while studying electrical engineering at Wits. After graduating, I began working at Entelect at the start of 2015. Most of my experience is with the .NET stack, but I have been a JavaScript enthusiast since the first time I had to make a button do something more than submit a form. For the last six months I have been working almost exclusively in JavaScript on a React based web application. I still like to dust off my multimeter from time to time, measure some voltages and such, which is why I ended up building this controller with Ryan.

@desolationjakey

JSinSPACE - JavaScript + electronics + Kerbals = Space? Sometimes ...

Using the game Kerbal Space Program together with a combination of an Arduino, various electronic components, node.js, krpc, johnny-five, Google Protocol buffers, and the secret ingredient, JavaScript, we have been able to successfully send at least 17% of our Kerbals into orbit.

Kudakwashe Murungu

Software Developer with a wide range of expertise and interests around, designing and delivering of modern solutions using tools that best fit. He has worked across different stacks building Web Applications and Mobile apps.
Lately, he's been spending most of his free time journeying into the world of data analysis with Python. He hopes to become a "Data Scientist" one day ;)
Currently at Databuild, building awesome things there. @k_mvet

Len Weincier

Len has built systems ranging from embedded devices to enterprise scale big data systems. Coming from C and C++ via Java and JEE through Ruby and now into Go and Node with bits of Clojure, he has been around the programming block. He’s trained many developers, biz analysts and project managers over time and spoken at many conferences.

@lenwnc

Intro to WebAssembly

We lift the lid a little and take a look at the upcoming WebAssembly standard and try to understand what it means for us all. What is WASM and where is it headed ? Will it affect us ? Is it the future of a multi language web ? Is it the end of Javascript ?

From webassembly.org: "WebAssembly or wasm is a new portable, size- and load-time-efficient format suitable for compilation to the web".

We take a whirlwind tour of WASM and its implications for the JS dev at at large.

Kenneth Kalmer

Performing regular wizardry through open-source software

@kennethkalmer

Reframing Single Page Apps for the Future

Building a rich single page app is really hard. re-frame, a ClojureScript wrapper over react, together with a beautifully simple flow of immutable derived data, makes this an absolute joy. It also sports a toolchain that is the envy of any developer who’s seen it, but can’t use it.

Facebook did something beautiful when they built react. The combination of reactive programming, functional programming and immutable data has truly taken the web by storm.

What does it look like when you’re using a simple programming language, and powerful toolchain, that enshrines these values to build your next react app? What if you don’t need to have these conflicting ideals in one code base?

re-frame is a wrapper (over a wrapper) over react and gives developers a simple deterministic way to deliver rich single page applications. Being impressively buzzword compliant, it brings together the best of react, redux, Elm and other ideas that have taken the SPA world by storm. re-frame delivers a data oriented approach to designing and building your next application.

Charlene Tshitoka

I'm software developer who’s passionate about learning different languages and paradigms. Lately I've been working with micro services in Node.js world. I'm currently part of Tes, a company that provides an online platform for teaching materials to teachers around the world. Before that, I worked on a number of projects as a consultant for ThoughtWorks.

@charlymul

Using back-pressure in Node.js

"The event-driven nature of Node.js provides a lot of flexibility for triggering multiple operations around the same time" - that was my first learning with Node.js. But it wasn’t until I did something silly in production that I learned her second lesson: "Node.js streams can use back pressure to control the flow of data to a certain destination"

In this talk, I'll share how I used back-pressure to ensure a database was not flooded with thousands of simultaneous writes against a single table. I’ll discuss Node.js streams, the different types and demonstrate how they can help with flow control.

Gergana Young

I am a software developer based in Johannesburg and working at BBD. I have worked in the software development field for over six years on various projects involving .NET, JavaScript, jQuery, AngularJS, MeteorJS and more recently Angular. Front end development has always been what I enjoyed doing most and I have recently become involved in UX and design as well. I am also interested in robotics, especially hacking my Star Wars droid.

@GerybBg

WTF is AoT?

Angular components and templates need to be compiled into JavaScript. There are two ways of doing this, Just-in-Time and Ahead-of-Time compilation. This talk will focus on the advantages of AoT and the performance benefits.

The Angular compiler is what turns the components and templates that we write into JavaScript. With the help of tools like webpack our new Angular applications can use Ahead-of-Time compilation for increased performance. * So what is AoT? * Is it something we should care about? * Is there anything we need to change in order to use AoT compilation in our projects? * What are the alternatives? This talk will cover these topics as well as the pros and cons of using AoT compilation and some performance comparisons.

Jaisheel Mistry

Jaisheel studied engineering and working in a research institute where where he ended up doing software development. He now has been developing for the past five years using different technologies such as .Net, Java, php, coldfusion and angular. He currently works for a consulting firm and is based at a large insurance company working with angular 2 and Redux. For fun Jaisheel is an avid road runner and has even completed the Comrades.

@Jmis3

NgRx effects

In this talk I will cover how to use angular 2 with redux. I will show NgRx effects are used as well cover the difference between switching, flatmate and map when working with observables. I would also like to show some of the funnies of error handling with NgRx effects.

NgRx gives you the ability to use redux with angular 2. In this short talk I would like to show how you can use NgRx effects to call an external app and how to do error handling using these effects. I will discuss the current bug that prevents effects from subscribing to redux actions once an error is caught during an effect. I will then show a suitable workaround that would enable the effect from unsubscribing to redux actions.

Nelson Pascoal

I have been working as a software developer for about 12 years now. I enjoy learning new things and most of all writing software. I consider myself to be a bit of a polyglot developer.

Lately I have been enjoying coding in Ruby, Scala, Clojure and JavaScript. From a framework point of view I work with EmberJS, React, Akka (Actor model framework) and Rails on a regular basis - amongst a myriad of other technologies.

@foomip

Building APIs with GraphQL

Sometimes REST just doesn’t feel like the right fit for your application, or maybe you need to build a flexible and easy-to-query API. GraphQL is definitely something you should have as an option in your toolbox. Let’s have a look at when GraphQL might just be the right fit.

Etienne Marais

I am passionate about clean code, Good music and great coffee. I love coding for the web and create amazing api’s

@etbal

Journey to VueJS

This is the story of how we are adopting VueJS into our team to start thinking about component level design and sharing. Sharing components across projects and leveraging event stream to share data across the business. Back to simplicity and making sense of the wild frontend space.

Pieter Louw

I am a Software Developer from Johannesburg, South Africa. The last decade I have been working on writing software for paypoint terminal devices and writing backend systems for them. In parallel to software development I am a family man who owns a bass guitar and who like the outdoors and travelling.

@pieterlouw

gRPC: An alternative to the REST?

While our public API’s these days are mainly REST,it has become possible to expose our services through gRPC in addition to REST.

gRPC is available for Node.js so join this journey to see what gRPC is and in what ways it can improve your API and/or internal service communications.

Thabang Warren Mathebula

I am a Software Developer currently working for Tangent Solutions. I’m also a co-founder of 2 companies, namely, JumbleIT Solutions and Khoyo Co, respectively. I started on my journey of Software Development late 2012 (heading to 5 years) . I have been through the stage when jQuery was the best thing since sliced bread, down to the age of a gazillion frameworks to choose from that are so prevalent today. I have PHP, C#, Java and JavaScript skills that afford me the benefit of being extremely flexible in terms of the amount of tools I have at my disposal to create software and web applications.

Our Journey Between NodeJS and ASP.NET Core

During the course of the talk, we will talk about our journey for fast and modern web applications using the latest technology, namely, NodeJS and ASP.NET Core. We will talk about the decision we had to make along the way in terms of which vehicle are we going to use to get us the best application.

Thabiso Mathebula

I am a professional Software Developer with 5 years of experience in using the Microsoft .NET Framework as a core of my skills. I am a proud co-founder of 2 Software Development companies. I specialize mostly in web development. I keep up with web standards and also keep up with what is current with regards to technology, especially software development. However, Software Development is my passion and I would like to keep myself at the highest level of skills as possible.

Our Journey Between NodeJS and ASP.NET Core

During the course of the talk, we will talk about our journey for fast and modern web applications using the latest technology, namely, NodeJS and ASP.NET Core. We will talk about the decision we had to make along the way in terms of which vehicle are we going to use to get us the best application.

Richard Young

Richard is a software developer at BNRY primarily using JavaScript. He has a passion for DevOps and automation and has also worked on projects of varying sizes in C# and Java. Richard loves keeping up with the latest changes in the JavaScript world and in his his spare time likes to tinker with new languages and frameworks.

@richardyoung00

Next level async with RxJS and Observables

There are an increasing number of asynchronous events to handle in the browser, from AJAX, Web Sockets and Web Workers to user interactions and animations. RxJS, sometimes referred to as ‘lodash for async’, provides us with a means of composing asynchronous and event-based programs by using Observables. Although it has a reputation for having a fairly steep learning curve, its versatility is making it increasingly popular. RxJS is included as a core part of Angular, and Observables are being standardised for ECMAScript. We will look at what advantages Observables have over Promises and callbacks, and how we can use RxJS to solve more complicated asynchronous tasks.

Harold Campbell

I’m Harold Campbell, a technologist and a consultant with more than 10 years experience in designing and developing rich, full-stack applications. I presently work at ThoughtWorks South Africa (Pty) as a Senior Technical Consultant.

I enjoy hacking and building things and apart from client projects, I build hobby projects in JavaScript, Ruby or Golang.

@haroldcampbell

Using anemic components for rich-data presentation

JavaScript can be used create compelling rich-data presentation interfaces. Libraries introduce an element of complexity that can reduce a designer’s expressiveness. Here we explore rich-data presentation interfaces without the need for existing libraries.

Rouan Wilsenach

Rouan Wilsenach is a software developer. He has built applications in a variety of technology stacks for companies in the financial services, education, health and media sectors. He’s worked as a consultant and coach, helping teams learn good engineering practices and helping businesses transform the way they build software. He now works remotely for Tes, where he builds full-stack JavaScript microservices to help teachers and schools.

@rouanw

Organised chaos: real-world JavaScript microservices

Rouan will show you the tools, technologies and techniques that power tes.com, a site that supports millions of teachers. He’ll share what he’s learned, what’s caught him out and some tips on how to operate effectively in the semi-chaotic world of full-stack JavaScript microservices.

Alexander Pittendrigh

I'm a simple, passionate programmer who enjoys learning new things.

I've been programming for a living for the last four years, although I did manage to earn some spending money long before I was formally employed.

Today I am gainfully employed at Entelect, as an Intermediate Software Engineer.

When I graduated I spurned JavaScript as a second-rate language. I never imagined JavaScript would be as influential and important as it is today. Never before has a language given you the ability to annoy so many people with strange bugs.

Over the years I have fallen in love with JavaScript and now I'm eager to share with you the things I have learnt about Webpack 2.

Webpack2 : getting the most out of this awesome tool

This talk will unpack what Webpack is; how it works; installation and how to make the most out of it for general use.