My Take Aways from Beer City Code Event

I had a really great weekend at @BeerCityCode in Grand Rapids. I wasn't able to make it to Friday's event, but I heard really good things about the deep dives they did. Saturday's event was really cool. It was held at Calvin College and the space was really well suited for the event. The keynote speaker talked in the main auditorium where about 500 coders gathered. After the keynote, there were a half-dozen or so breakout sessions each hour for the next seven hours. The one downside of the event was that there were so many interesting sessions that it was hard to choose which one to go to. Besides attending sessions, a really nice lunch was provided at the college cafeteria, and there was an optional VIP party for organizers, speakers, and guests who paid for the ticket. I got a ticket for myself and Kat, so we attended the party. 

Before the keynote address, a couple of the sponsors came on stage to give brief motivational talks. The first sponsor came out and asked how many people wrote blogs, gave talks at meetups, or did podcasts. A large number of us raised our hands, then he asked how many people attended user groups, and other events. By the time he finished adding filters, most people were raising their hands. He made the point that it was people like us in the audience that he liked hiring because we were there spending a Saturday to improve our skills and expand our knowledge. Both of the sponsors issued challenges to step out of our comfort zones and learn something new, talk to someone you wouldn't normally talk to, and do anything you could to make the day a full day of learning. 

After the event, Kat and I walked from our hotel downtown to the VIP party at the Waldron Public House. When we first walked into the building we went to the downstairs area, and everyone was wearing formal attire.  I looked around for a moment, and I thought there is no way all of these computer geeks went home and changed into suits and dresses. Then the bride came running over and said our group was upstairs on the third floor and that this was her wedding reception. We took the wrong stairs and ended up having to go through the kitchen and take a service elevator to get to the third floor. When we finally made it to the right place, there was a nice bar setup and a sliders buffet with either hamburger or pulled pork. Kat and I got a couple of drinks and fixed a plate then found a seat. Kat leaned over to me and said that everyone there looked like they were a programmer. I told her that was because they were. She may have been the only one who had just a VIP ticket and didn't go to the conference.

We mingled with a number of people at dinner and talked about how well done the event was. We also talked about coding and processes like agile and paired programming. Between the craft beer and the tech talk, I was totally in my element. We stayed at the party for quite a while, but eventually, we decided to venture out and check out some of the other watering holes downtown. Everything about the event was great, and I will definitely attend again next year. As an independent consultant, I don't have the luxury of having a company pay for these kinds of things, so an event like this is really cool. Most of the Microsoft events are out of my price range, so I am going to keep an eye out for more things like this. Leave me a comment below if you have any suggestions for coding events for someone on a budget. 

Below I am going to outline my notes on the keynote and the breakout sessions I attended. 

Doug Crockford gave the keynote speech, and it was really entertaining. His main point was getting rid of clutter in programming languages, but specifically JavaScript. He brought up contentious issues like spaces vs tabs, post vs put vs patch, let vs var, and null vs undefined. He made some really good arguments about which ones to get rid of, but he also seemed to get how programmers love to hoard things and don't like change. He also talked about his hopes for the next great programming language. Everything about his talk was entertaining and informative including the Q & A at the end. When I talked to people at the VIP party several of the other attendees referred to Crockford as a rockstar in the programming world, after seeing him at this event I would have to agree. 

Doug Mair - Data Visualization with Javascript

I had originally planned on going to a functional C# session at this time, but the presenter had to cancel. By the time I made it to this session, it was standing room only. Doug did a really good job presenting the material and showing how the tools worked with working examples. He showed examples of D3.js and DC.js which is based on D3 and crossfilter. I was really impressed by the talk because I had never seen these tools before. Doug knew the material and presented it well. 

Amara Graham - How to build a chatbot

Amara did a really good presentation on the IBM Watson AI framework and how to build a chatbot with it. She explained a lot of the terminology used in the environment and walked through the IBM user interface for creating the chatbot. She discussed intents, entities, dialogs, and contexts. The talk was really interesting, but I think 50 minutes wasn't enough time for this subject. I would have really liked to see more examples. Of course, that is what this event really was about. You learned just enough to get you excited enough to research the topics some more. 

Alex Konrad - Functional Reactive Programming with Javascript

I really enjoyed this talk, but I wish it hadn't been right after lunch. Alex was an engaging speaker, but he was a little quiet and I was a little sleep after eating. He had a really nice mix of quotes and philosophy to go with this talk. My favorite piece of wisdom was the quote: "One can never step into the same river twice". I can't remember who said this, but I think he said it was one of the pre-Socratics. His explanation of promises vs observables was really helpful for me. I have used both and never quite understood the difference. Alex made it very simple. A promise will have one value in the future, and an observable can have many different values at different times. 

Jen Creighton - @gurlcode - The Hows and Whys of Flexible React Components

Jen's talk was interesting, and she gave a good example from her company about how to reduce code and make the components more efficient. I was a little disappointed by how short the talk was. She was done in about 20 minutes. Not having much experience with React, I was hoping for a little more depth on the coding and usage of the components. If I had more experience with react going in, I probably would have gotten more out of this talk. 

Stephen Cleary - Async Everywhere, The Async Invasion

I think this was my favorite talk of the day. Stephen really engaged the audience well with a perfect combination of humor and technical knowledge. I was really looking forward to this topic because I have been using Async more and more in my code, and I really don't have a solid understanding of how it works. I still need a deep dive into the subject, but this talk gave me a stronger footing of what I need to learn. A lot of this discussion was talking about the Async and Await pattern and how it started with Microsoft and is now being propagated through a large number of languages. Stephen also passed out discount coupons for his book at the end which I will definitely take advantage of. 

Justin Majeske - Angular in the Enterprise

This talk was really interesting from a process perspective, but it wasn't what I was expecting it to be. Based on the title, I thought it would primarily be about Angular, but it was really about how they built an application for the State of Michigan using Angular and ASP.NET. It was cool to hear about how they accomplished their project and the challenges they went through. The talk gave me things to think about in my current project, and seeing how they organized their user stories and sprints was pretty valuable. There wasn't any code to speak of, and I would have liked to hear more about how they coded angular and if there were specific challenges to using angular in the enterprise vs using it in public sites. 

Ed Charbeneau - #Blazor

Between this talk and the Async talk, it was hard to decide which was my favorite. I really liked this talk a lot, and the technology looks really cool. I have to put this as my second favorite talk because the technology is still experimental and it could die off. From what I saw in Ed's demo, I would be surprised if it died completely. Web assembly is getting some real buzz behind it, and having C# tie into that just seems like a logical direction for Microsoft to go. Microsoft has really been embracing open standards and open source, so this really seems like a good fit for them. Ed did a really good job of presenting the topic and he engaged the audience really well. 

I really enjoyed everything about Beer City Code, and the organizers did an awesome job. I have been to a lot of meetups, and a few of the Microsoft events, but this was my first event like this. I have always wanted to go to CodeMash, and after going to this event, I am going to make sure I attend it next year. I also read about a Cream City Code event in Milwaukee that sounds like it might be similar. I really do enjoy visiting another town and learning about new technologies. It is kind of like having a working vacation.