Choose your battles

Slides from talk at the 2015 Shropgeek (R)evolution conference.
Exploring role of pragmatism in being technical director at a digital agency and what we can learn from the Spanish Civil War in dealing with an increasing complexity in working with code.

Transcript

1. choose your battles:
   tales from the front lines
   of a digital agency
   

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3. you say you want a
   (r)evolution?
   

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6. “the real division is not
   between conservatives
   and revolutionaries
   but between
   authoritarians and
   libertarians.”
   @GeorgeOrwell1984
   

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7. libertarianism
   

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8. dangers of
   authoritarianism
   

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9. the web?
   

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10. rules and choices
    

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11. loose rules
    

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12. confidence, trends & the
    dogmatic crowd
    

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13. building websites
    

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14. handlebars
    Gulp
    Yeoman
    Sass
    Bower
    Grunt
    Less-CSS
    EmberJS
    AngularJS
    underscore.js
    Backbone
    CoffeeScript.js
    Compass
    Bourbon
    npm
    CSS
    JavaScript
    HTML
    PostCSS
    Broccoli
    React
    Polymer
    RequireJS
    Jasmine
    Jasmine
    jQuery ZeptoJS
    Modernizr
    mustache
    Jade
    

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15. “Looking at the stack listed in the front
    end tooling survey, I can safely say that
    as a junior developer, I’d probably be
    unemployable”
    @codepo8
    

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16. “The more I see - the more I know. The
    more I know - the less I understand”
    @paulwellerHQ
    

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17. CSS
    

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18. 
    
    @import url(style.css);
    @media screen and (min-width: 768px)
    …
    

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19. CSS
    SMACSS
    ITCSS
    OOCSS BEM
    

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20. who are we building for?
    

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21. the myth of CSS
    

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22. “People don’t care about things -
    they care about the things that
    happen”
    @russmiles
    

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23. “That I cannot say sir. I am one of these
    people who are quite happy to wear
    cotton, but have no idea how it works.”
    @edmund_blackadder
    

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24. the ‘p’ word
    

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25. principles and purposes help
    make choices
    

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26. • URLs are constant
    • anticipate a range of inputs
    • expect JavaScript to fail
    my principles
    

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27. “the code is more what you'd call
    ‘guidelines' than actual rules.”
    @cptn_barbossa
    

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28. “the real division is not
    between conservatives
    and revolutionaries
    but between
    authoritarians and
    libertarians.”
    @GeorgeOrwell1984
    

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