What should we pay attention to in 2022?

What are you paying attention to?

I was the first producer of D2 in 2019. The predecessor of D2, "Front-end Technology Forum", has been held for 16 sessions. I believe that many front-end students have already understood it very well. In 2022, in combination with Alibaba's trend of front-end and client integration, D2 will also be upgraded to a terminal technology conference this year. This year D2 is also my third time as a language and framework producer.

In the notes of Zhihu and some front-end students in the past two sessions of D2, I can see that many students can still get what I mean: in the language and framework session, we mainly introduce functional programming and data-driven, and also want front-end developers to have a sense of the infrastructure we rely on in the front-end -- browser and JavaScript ecosystem.

This is because most of the front-end engineers I have contacted focus on business requirements and application development. Most of the time, we develop efficiency in the front end of the volume, and constantly study the speed-up wheel in the application layer. I wonder if there are other possibilities: for example, create a front-end language like Rescript to change the ecosystem of front-end development from the language level, or use functional development frameworks like RxJS to solve the "side effects" introduced by front-end development through functional programming?

This year, D2 turned to the conference of terminal D2, and joined the students of the client. The "client" in my image seems to have no special new technology in recent years, at least my cognition is still on Swift and Kotlin. When I communicated with several Alibaba client students, I found that everyone's cognition was the same, because Swift and Kotlin were far from universal. I am also wondering whether we can speak more mature languages and frameworks in D2 this year and talk about the technology of Product Ready.

When I make D2 topic selection or annual technology extrapolation, I often refer to two materials: Gartner's Technology Maturity Curve and ThoughtWorks' Technology Radar.

Technology maturity curve

In fact, it is true that many emerging technologies are abandoned before they are popularized. Gartner's annual technology maturity curve (which requires paid consultation) predicts the development law of each technology: the promotion period of birth, the peak period of expected expansion, the bottom period of foam burst, the bright period of steady climb, and the plateau period of real production. The early stage of emerging technology may die out at any time, while only ecologically robust and market-approved technology can reach the plateau and continue to promote its life.

The technology radar of thoughtworks (see the end of the article for the free download link) will also circle the new technologies and technologies that are moved in and out each year. Technical radar is considered by recommending whether you adopt the dimension of production environment.

Therefore, this year's terminal D2, in addition to the emerging promotion period, is still in the whole stack of crazy hype technology, and we will also introduce some increasingly mature (stable plateau period) technology.

What should we pay attention to in 2022?

Our biggest feeling this year is that the cold is pressing, but the more it is at a low point, the more we should adjust our mentality and accumulate strength through active learning. The advantage of technology is that the certainty is relatively high. Even if the market is volatile, many of the underlying foundations remain unchanged. Think of a PPT of my front end artist Sharon in 2020. Let's encourage each other.

In 2022, it will remain active in the front-end open source community. In addition to QuickJS, there are also bun.js, which has been full of controversy for some time, and turbo pack, which has recently emerged. Unlike the front-end ecosystem, the client developers I have contacted are generally pessimistic. They feel that the tide of mobile internet has passed and the rising channel is closing. This is also our original intention for terminal talent integration: client and front-end engineers should not be separated by technology, but should be layered according to business after integration: application development terminal engineers and infrastructure development terminal engineers. "T-shaped" structure: application development is close to business and focuses on business domain modeling; Infrastructure development is close to the evolution of technical specifications, and technology is used to promote business development.

So this year, our D2 language and framework will introduce the content of Product Ready in the application layer:

Java's functional programming Kotlin and Apple's Swift best practices. Swift and Kotlin have become common languages at the front and back ends, with their own development ecology. Students on the client side can also switch to back-end service development through these languages. I have always adhered to the original development of cloud to today. The service architecture of the back-end has long been irrelevant to the development language. We can fully use various languages we are familiar with to do back-end development. Developers who master two languages can also experience a wave of client+backend full stack. Although the full stack engineers have mentioned less in recent years, the full stack perspective is more transparent, and there are more solutions and cognition for both business side and basic side problems.

The topics at the infrastructure level include NoSlate framework and turbo pack. NoSlate is a new generation lightweight Javascript container solution, produced by Alibaba Midway team, which allows you to change a single server into a serverless one second. Turbopack is quite famous. Recently, the CEO of Vercel himself claimed to be 10x faster than vite, which also attracted the discussion of evan. The terminal can see another case of Rust transformation. What is it like?

Of course, these contents have not been finalized and are still in the process of voting and screening. Students, if you have a good topic, you are welcome to submit it to us. You can also vote on the above content that you are interested in and want to hear.

Ending

It is said that the cold has passed to the Silicon Valley on the other side of the ocean. This is a better time to adjust your mind, learn more, accumulate strength and warm up together. In 2022, the D2 Terminal Technology Conference prepared Node.js, Swift/Kotlin, front-end engineering, Flutter, JS/WSM engine, network, AR/VR/3D, cloud rendering and other front-end&mobile topics. If you want to learn more or communicate more, click here to register for D2 and hope to meet you at D2.

But any way wants the cold winter to pass earlier. I still like the sentence "Anglo Xun": terminal technology needs to develop, and community ecology depends on everyone.