The Developer’s Guide to Promoting Your Work

A few years ago, I had an idea to make the web better. It was going to be great, and I had the team to build it. Nine months of late nights and lost weekends later, we launched it! The problem: no one cared.

A brilliant project isn't enough. I had to spread my vision, which was difficult for a developer like me. I learned quickly that even the best ideas needed to be sold. I had to build an audience, tell a story, and win over customers. Join me for a developer's guide to marketing. I'll share hard-fought lessons on page design, social networking, advertising, and analytics that will help you bring your ideas to the world.

Hostile JavaScript: Attacking and Defending the Browser

How much JavaScript is on your website? Do you know what it does? No really, have you looked at the code and seen what it does? Probably not.

JavaScript controls the client side environment, and we can use it to compromise users, consume resources, and steal data. Yet many websites continue to add scripts without review, audit, or thought.

Let’s explore what JavaScript can do to a browser, the vectors that JavaScript can get added to websites, and how we can defend against JavaScript attacks.

Software Testing from Failed Projects

To be confident our code works correctly and can be safely changed, we can write tests. But are we writing enough? Are we writing too many? Are they the right ones to give us the confidence we need?

Many projects fail because they were improperly tested, and the risks inherent in the software were not exposed with the correct test. In this session, an “enterprise” developer turned business founder shares stories of past failed projects, and how better testing could have prevented it. He’ll challenge how you think about testing, breaking past dogma and false-metrics to get the most out of your time.

Observable Web Applications

Users don’t see your distributed services, cloud architecture, or instrumentation—they only see how the web app is working. Understanding their experience in the client-side is the first step towards understanding the rest of the system. We’ll explore how to make your client-side applications more observable through error tracking, web performance, and usage analytics. With better understanding of real-user experience, you’ll better understand the real behavior of your systems.

Build vs Buy: Software Systems at Jurassic Park

We were so preoccupied with whether we could, we didn’t stop to think if we should. Nowhere at Jurassic Park was this more true than how we developed software. Having the wrong software and support structures was a key factor in the failures of our first park. We were entrepreneurs launching something new and architects integrating an enterprise. And our decisions had lasting consequences. Deciding which problems were worth our time was foundational to our failure.

Join us for a retrospective of software systems at Jurassic Park. We’ll dig into case studies and explore our successes and failures. We’ll uncover the options, costs, and risks inherent in deciding what software to build, what to buy, and alternatives in between. We’ll explore the opportunity cost of building systems, the sustainability of open-source, and the risks of vendor lock-in. You’ll leave equipped to make better decisions and avoid the pitfalls we made at Jurassic Park.

The Hunt for Red Observability

In October 2022, ClancyNet software users began experiencing a new undetectable bug, while monitoring systems reported nothing. The DevOps team must quickly determine: is something broken, and who is affected?

This suspenseful thriller tracks a new stealth bug as it evades traditional infrastructure monitoring. We’ll explore modern application monitoring and observability approaches, like RED, that can better detect and prevent user impacting bugs.

This session requires sound and video.