45 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
45 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
---
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layout: post
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title: Heading to New York
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date: 2014-04-30 11:00:00
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category: JavaScript
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permalink: /blog/2014/04/30/
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---
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Lots of tinkering has been going on here at pcjs.org the past couple of weeks, but with nothing substantial to show for it.
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Fixing lots of little problems requires only small bits of time, whereas buckling down and tackling "the next BIG thing" for
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PCjs requires a much more serious time commitment, with limited interruptions.
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And I certainly can't start on "the next BIG thing" now, because I'm heading to New York tomorrow, for [EmpireJS](http://2014.empirejs.org),
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my first JavaScript conference *and* my first trip to New York in about 20 years.
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I'm going to the conference partly because it was a great excuse to finally visit New York again (and with the whole family,
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since all three of us are computer nerds), but also to get a more up-close-and-personal sense of where this whole JavaScript
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renaissance is headed.
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Is it headed for a fiery crash? This recent blog post
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("[you have ruined javascript](http://codeofrob.com/entries/you-have-ruined-javascript.html)")
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suggests it already has for some people. Is it drowning in the Sea of Endless Proliferation, as this still-relevant two-year-old
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[parody](http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/05/jokes-for-nerds-html9-responsive-boilerstrap-js/) implies? Excerpt:
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> *If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the endless proliferation of responsive grids, adaptive images, HTML boilerplates,
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CSS frameworks and JavaScript whirligigs then what you need is the HTML9 Responsive Boilerstrap JS.*
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> *To install HTML9 Responsive Boilerstrap JS just “attackclone the grit repo pushmerge, then rubygem the lymphnode js shawarma
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module — and presto!”*
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> *If you’re wondering what H9RBS.js actually is, well, you can abandon any hopes of one day being hip. But if you must know,
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H9RBS.js is a “flexible, dependency-free, lightweight, device-agnostic, modular, baked-in, component framework MVC library
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shoelacestrap to help you kickstart your responsive CSS-based app architecture backbone kitchensink tweetybirds.”*
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Seriously, I'm concerned about how the JavaScript language (rather than the endless procession of frameworks) is going to evolve,
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and whether it even can. Two examples: at a high-level, we have Microsoft pushing [TypeScript](http://www.typescriptlang.org/),
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and at a much lower level, we have Mozilla pushing [asm.js](http://asmjs.org). And while I like aspects of both those efforts,
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I'm relunctant to go very far down either of those paths right now, because I don't want to get suckered. Inevitably, someone will
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see a *different* shiny object along another fork in the road, and everyone will chase after that instead.
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Will [EmpireJS](http://2014.empirejs.org) answer any of these big questions? It doesn't really matter. I just expect to learn stuff,
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and learning is fun!
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*[@jeffpar](http://twitter.com/jeffpar)*
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*April 30, 2014*
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