It takes all sorts of components to make a modern app: a web server, a data store, search capability, caching, etc. Historically, these parts have communicated using different languages, protocols and data structures. This has forced people in the same team to learn very different skills to one another. It has also required the use of heavy abstraction layers to convert the data of one layer (e.g. objects in the server-side code) into the language of another (e.g. SQL records for the database).

This Async session, with Richard Marr, explores how web app development can work very differently. What happens if all of the components in your stack speak in JavaScript's familiar JSON format, over REST APIs? Richard has been experimenting with Node.js, CouchDB and ElasticSearch and would like to share a few thoughts, discuss a few implications and, if all goes to plan, a bit of live coding too.

Richard has been creating web apps with JavaScript for 12 years. He organises the London Open Source Search Social and until recently was Director of Engineering at a search startup. These days, he's enjoying spending time with his wife and newborn son.

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