Software Architecture Superstream: Frontend Architectures

Neal Ford: Introduction (5 minutes) - 8:00am PT | 11:00am ET | 3:00pm UTC/GMT

• Neal Ford welcomes you to the Software Architecture Superstream.

Tomasz Ducin: Architect's Guide to Frontend Frameworks (45 minutes) - 8:05am PT | 11:05am ET | 3:05pm UTC/GMT

• The modern web is evolving so fast that it's challenging to make the right decisions about a project—and that’s true not only for web devs but also for solution architects. Jokes about JS frameworks aside, most of the major tools are built around certain patterns and architectural decisions that you might not grasp at the first sight. It's often very different from the classical object-oriented and imperative paradigms. Many of the tools that seem to pop up each week do solve issues with performance, design, and complexity, often by introducing IoC or making the code declarative. . .and sometimes by introducing new complexity. Join Tomasz Ducin to explore the most important concepts that the modern JavaScript ecosystem relies on, including strategies for view rerenders, view-as-a-function, reactivity on the UI, push-based control flow, handling client application state, and splitting web apps into micro-frontends. If you're keen on web dev, this talk is for you. If you're interested in architecture and different ways to tackle problems, this talk is also for you.
• Tomasz Ducin is a developer, architect, and independent consultant experienced in both frontend and backend who helps teams in solving issues in complex frontend applications on both code and architecture level. A critic of buzzwords, Tomasz is passionate about explaining how things work—the pros and cons, what they depend on, and how certain decisions affect your system. He’s also an ex-theater actor.

Natalia Venditto: Beyond Micro-Frontends and the Jamstack—Architecting and Integrating Decoupled Applications in the Cloud for Enhanced User Experience (45 minutes) - 8:50am PT | 11:50am ET | 3:50pm UTC/GMT

• The frontend ecosystem is regarded by other technologists as a world full of hype, new patterns, frameworks, and ephemeral approaches. Join Natalia Venditto to explore a methodical framework for making the design and infrastructure decisions to support a cloud native approach to building composable decoupled applications from a frontend perspective. This implementation guides architects and developers as they build applications using cutting-edge technologies in the cloud and the Web Platform, developer tools optimized for amazing developer experiences, and ultimately architect for the user while meeting business objectives.
• Natalia Venditto leads the end-to-end developer experience for JavaScript and Node.js on Azure at Microsoft. She’s worked as a frontend and full stack developer, technical lead, software architect, and solutions architect. She’s also an open source contributor, part of the Google Developer Experts program for Angular and web technologies, and a Google mentor, as well as an MVP Award-winner for Developer Technologies.
• Break (10 minutes)

Julia Nguyen: Riding the Ever-Changing Waves of the Frontend Like a Neopian (45 minutes) - 9:45am PT | 12:45pm ET | 4:45pm UTC/GMT

• Like the Y2K internet, frontend web development started off with few rules. It has evolved into a complex ecosystem requiring expertise in both product and infrastructure engineering, all of which built upon the social currency of our industry. Learning to sustainably navigate the ever-changing landscape is more necessary than ever. Through vignettes of 2000s online DIY communities and past eras in web development, Julia Nguyen explores the ways in which you can sustain and strengthen your frontend engineering craft and culture as individuals, teams, and organizations. It’s like being a kid hustling for Neopoints and the coolest Neopets guild on the interwebs!
• Julia Nguyen (she/her) is a community organizer, artist, writer, keynote speaker, and staff software engineer from Toronto/unceded Tkaronto land and based in San Francisco/unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land. Previously, she worked at Shopify, Intuit Mailchimp, Headspace, Indiegogo, Expedia, and Thoughtworks on a broad variety of web and mobile engineering teams. Julia created if-me.org, an open source nonprofit that since 2014 has built a mental health communication platform and amplified community activists and organizations. She was one of the founding organizers of the San Francisco chapter of Write/Speak/Code and led mentorship initiatives at the University of Waterloo’s Women in Computer Science Club. At various tech companies, she has founded and organized employee resource groups focused on disability and mental health justice.

Tejas Kumar: Navigating Today’s Frontend Architectures (50 minutes) - 10:30am PT | 1:30pm ET | 5:30pm UTC/GMT

• Frontends are becoming more dynamic and serverful, with the BFF (backend for the frontend) becoming an integral part of the development lifecycle. Tejas Kumar takes you through trending patterns around this context and shares insights about architecting high-performance systems.
• Tejas Kumar is an international keynote speaker with an engineering background spanning 22 years, from design to frontend to backend to DevOps. Today, Tejas shares his expertise with developer communities worldwide, equipping them to do their best work.

Scott Davis: Redecentralizing the Web and Recapturing Our Data (45 minutes) - 11:20am PT | 2:20pm ET | 6:20pm UTC/GMT

• Scott Davis explores Tim Berners-Lee’s new vision for the web—Solid and Pods—where user data is “at the beck and call of the users themselves…a future in which [web] programs work for you.” This is an alternative path where privacy and resiliency are at the heart of system architectures; a path where the web’s pendulum swings back to decentralization; a path that leads to a fundamentally user-centric tech ecosystem.
• Scott Davis is a web architect and digital accessibility advocate who focuses on the multisensory aspects of web development. In a world where half of all Google searches are done by voice and 80% of all social media videos are watched with the sound off and closed captions on, accessibility is a springboard for innovation.

Neal Ford: Closing Remarks (5 minutes) - 12:05pm PT | 3:05pm ET | 7:05pm UTC/GMT

• Neal Ford closes out today’s event.

Upcoming Software Architecture Superstream events:

• Domain-Driven Design and Event-Driven Architecture - August 16, 2023
• Data Architecture Styles and Patterns - November 1, 2023