Abstract:
The next big thing in JavaScript is ECMAScript 6 – it’s essentially a major rewrite of the Javascript engine that will change the way you develop your code. You’ll have all sorts of great features like classes, arrow notation, template strings, local block scoping, nice iterators, generators, and a lot more.
But… the bitter pill is your browser. Not all features of ECMAScript 6 will be available now, or even in the next few years, and who knows when everyone will upgrade. But if you want to take advantage of many of these features, what are you to do?
Enter cross-compilers. There are several popular ones, including Traceur, Google’s “transpiler”, and ‘6to5′, both of which convert ES6 to ES5. In this talk, we’ll roll up our sleeves and use JavaScript 6 features TODAY, on our browsers, writing our code with real ES 6 classes, testing with Karma, running with Gulp and NodeJS. We’ll explore the extensions that let us perform type checking of our methods. We’ll also discuss what areas of the spec to avoid, and how to write your code so it will take advantage of these features while still running well today. Let’s get ready for the future, and start reaping the benefits now.
About Ken:
Ken almost started coding at an early age when he used a battery, two wires and an old flashcube to make a flashlight (those in the other room saw a blinding flash, then heard screams of agony). Dodging this early accident, he never stops learning how to break things. He is Chariot’s Training Services director, and writes and teaches lots of AngularJS courses. He also teaches/works with Spring, Java and Maven, among others, and worked previously with Spring Roo (he’s co-author of Spring Roo in Action from Manning), Grails and various databases. He loves photography and Jazz Drumming, and lives alone with four kids, a wife, three dogs and his tinnitus.