NodeDay 2018 Recap—combatting disruption through integrated development

Node.js, and the web platform, are really in this deeply interconnected Venn diagram of technologies, where we have JavaScript, HTML, and the web platform as this common dialect of how we’re able to deliver these dynamic experiences that we need to put in front of our end-users. So, Node, is speaking the same language as it is enabling us to deliver those experiences faster and I expect the broad consensus around, Node and its open governance and the web and its broad usage and standards, to continue to drive innovation, both for developers and for businesses.

It’s really important that you’re really unified as much as possible and I think that’s what JavaScript and Node moving to the server has helped having, it is language. At the end of the day, it is just the exact same things that primary language is, it’s a means of communication and that’s what it is, and you’re communicating when you write that software.

The challenge of the network transformation program we embarked upon wasn’t really about technology or systems, even though it was. There are huge investments in technology. Massive IT systems investments, but the more and more you delved into it, it was about a cultural change that needed to be made and how a shift in mindset needed to occur around how the organization went to market in a far more standardized way. So, they’re moving from a world of proprietary technology to an open standard world and that drives a significant shift in how the company operates.

Days like this are really important to bring people together to share ideas because often people are working in an organization, they have close contact with their team, but they’re not necessarily getting outside of that organization, that silo. So things like this, days like this, where you have presentations on different topics and you have different perspectives coming in and discussing different areas of work, I think are really important to be able to take that information back into the organization so that you can use it.

I’m working with, all the other Walmart infrastructure teams to make Node.js a more accessible platform for all our development teams. We’re growing out, new tools to make developing secure code easier and seamless.

One thing that is extremely important to me, that I would like to put a lot more time towards, is this journey and this story of JavaScript becoming a seamless coding platform, front and back. So, to do that, you would want Node on the back end, and this gives so many great possibilities to developers to really hone their skills in JavaScript and be able to code backwards and forwards, the application they need. And, you don’t have to just to be on front end. You can switch your developers around as you like because we always want to keep learning and keep making new things. So, Node, I think is the stepping stone to really making this kind of universal standard of how we code and I think that standards like that are really important to be able to create more and more.

So Telus and Ahmad were amazing. They have been instrumental in our progress so far. They reached out to us and they saw what we were doing and they’re like, how can we help? And we were just blown away by how supportive they’ve been. They have been instrumental in introducing us to people who want to volunteer with our group and also helping, I think really showing our kids how large corporations care about them as well and I think that’s a really important aspect of teaching kids why it’s important to enter tech.