Ryan Dahl revisits the design decisions he wishes he could undo in Node — and uses the postmortem to introduce Deno.
A Cartoon Intro to WebAssembly
Lin Clark·2017·JSConfEULin Clark explains what WebAssembly actually is, why it is fast, and what it means for the browser as a runtime — in her signature illustrated style.
What the Heck is the Event Loop Anyway?
Philip Roberts·2014·JSConfEUA visual, almost-cartoon walkthrough of how JavaScript actually schedules work — and the talk that taught a generation of frontend devs how their runtime really behaves.
Minimal API Surface Area
Sebastian Markbåge·2014·JSConfEUSebastian Markbåge argues that great libraries shrink — they teach you patterns instead of adding APIs, and they hand functionality back to the language whenever they can.
Stop Writing Dead Programs
Jack Rusher·2022·Strange LoopJack Rusher argues that most of our languages are still, accidentally, designed around the punchcard — and shows what a living programming environment could look like instead.
The Wet Codebase
Dan Abramov·2019·DeconstructAbramov on what DRY actually costs once you've lived with a too-clever abstraction — and why writing the same code twice is sometimes the right answer.
Procedural Programming: It's Back? It Never Went Away
Kevlin Henney·2018·ACCUHenney goes back to the sixties to show that 'procedural' was never the slur we made it into — and that much of what we call modern style is older than we think.