<style> code { white-space : pre-wrap !important; word-break: break-word; } </style> ### Navigating a Series of Tubes ###### Mike Ebert --- ### Personal web development journey began in 1992 - Dad was a software developer - Had a computer, let me play Castles II, and challenged me to learn Pascal - All types of schooling, including home school - Took AP Computer Science on my own ---- ### BYU: 1999--2006 - Computer Science with a business minor - Friend introduced me to web pages and _all_ the builds of Firefox - Building web pages with tables and spacer gifs ---- ### BYU: 1999--2006 - Served a mission in Russia 2001-2003 - Changed majors because of conflict between school and being engaged - Business major (marketing emphasis) - But took a CSS class and an Internet marketing course ---- ### Sebo Marketing - Internship doing marketing - Found out I knew stuff about websites - CSS 2 and the div revolution - Internet Explorer 6 compatibility issues ---- ### Sebo Marketing - Graduated in 2006 - Led website and then technical services team - Custom CMS in .Net, PHP - Hand-written JavaScript functions - Fonts - WordPress 2.3 ---- ### Alliance Web Marketing - Tried to run a marketing agency, but really did mostly web development - WordPress (various versions) - jQuery - Responsive Web Design (RWD) ---- ### Perfect Search/IMAT Solutions - Web development, then Angular web development for a medical search and records product - JavaScript, baby! - Angular ---- ### WhiteCanyon - Website rebuild with huge results - Static site generation, headless ---- ### DVO - Working on a useful app for a company with very stable demand - React ---- ### Luhnar - Co-founder - CDN - Got crushed by COVID ---- ### Indicio - Verifiable credentials and self-sovereign identity - Team lead, bring all my talents to bear ---- One thing I'm proud of is having the opportunity to mentor and help launch careers --- ### Where we're going - Consolidating of CMS and store options - WYSIWYGs that don't generate garbage - Voice interaction ---- ### Where we're going - Serverless - SSR - Edge delivery ---- ### Where we're going - Security and privacy - Block chain - Web 1, 2, 3, 5... ---- ### Where we're going - Big data sets - AI-generated code - Quantum computing --- ### What to expect as a web developer ---- ### Change will be constant - Get asked to do stuff that is only tangential to what you're actually "supposed" to do... - Interact across disciplines, teams, companies, time zones, nations, languages... - Your title may not be that applicable or that big a deal ---- ### Keys to the Process Remote work is entirely possible but has its own challenges ---- What do you call a group of programmers? A merge conflict ---- ### Keys to the Process The process and the communication is as important as the code ---- ### Keys to the Process Estimating is hard ---- ### Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. ---- ### Industry Growth and Leadership - Demand is high for technically capable people - Management is an option, leadership is a must - Morality is your gift to the world as you shape the future of humanity --- ## Recommendations ---- ### Always be learning - Get your fundamentals down - Find sources that will help you stay up to date - Save some time for side projects - Have a focus or emphasis in addition to programming ---- ### Live in the real world - Get a great chair and don't sit in it all the time - Exercise, have adventures offline - Don't let web development get in the way of what's truly important ---- ### Push hard to grow - Step up for new responsibility - Try new things, do what scares you - Don't get stuck in a bad situation ---- Your purpose may not be visible until it's in hindsight --- ### Thank You! michael.k.ebert@gmail.com