Tools for the Job
A session with two speakers, in three parts:
Getting more from Sublime Text 2
We've come a long way from writing our HTML in notepad and debugging JavaScript with alerts. As our applications have increased in complexity, so too have the tools we use to build them. However, it's all well and good having a huge and powerful feature set for your editor if the entry barrier puts off all but the most dedicated (cough Vim), or if the tool becomes too slow and unwieldy (cough cough Eclipse).
Thankfully, there's a new sheriff in town. Combining a great feature set, blisteringly fast response times, and a great plugin system, Sublime Text 2 is a gloriously sexy coding environment. In this talk, we'll have a look at what the fuss is all about, with an introduction to Multiple Selection, Fuzzy matching and other 'how did I ever live without this' features. We'll also take a look at some of the must-have plugins, and how to write your own snippets.
Hidden gems in Chrome Dev Tools
In the second part of the evening, we'll have a look at the Chrome Dev Tools ying to Sublime Text 2's yang. Although there are few modern JS developers who don't already use Chrome Dev Tools (or a similar alternative such as Firebug), we'll scratch beneath the surface to find some of the little known nuggets of debugging goodness.
10 Things I Never Knew About Node.js
Node.js is a rapidly emerging software stack that brings JavaScript from the browser to the server. As with all new things, however, sometimes it is misunderstood. This talk will show some of the cooler, harder to reach features of Node.js and debunk some of the popular misconceptions surrounding it.
The speakers
Alastair Lockie is a JavaScript developer working at Brandwatch. A former Java developer, he made the leap to the front end and has never looked back. Working on a large-scale JavaScript application has driven him to squeeze the juiciest tidbits from his tools, removing the friction out of development and debugging.
Adam Yeats is a freelance Web Developer from Brighton, UK and a second year student and Course Representative at the University of Brighton. He writes code in JavaScript, Ruby and Node.js flavours and often wishes he could hibernate for the winter.
##UPDATE: Notes from the talk
There were a few request's for Alastair to post his plugins and user preferences, so these are listed below. For more details, check out his blog post.
Plugins:
- Sublime Linter
- Git
- Github Gists
- Zen Coding
- Automatic Backups
- Sidebar Enhancements
- Tag
- Missing Palette Commands
User Preferences:
Alastair's User Preferences can be found at this Gist.