Danny Brian

An Introduction to Video Game Development

9:00 AM MDT

With many AAA video games in its portfolio, Unity has become a powerhouse within the game development and simulation industry. But Unity is more than a game engine — it's a complete ecosystem of tools, workflows, and integrations. Very small development teams and even individual hobby developers can create great games with Unity, for any platform, 3D or 2D.

In this workshop, I'll give an overview of tools and techniques for building games for desktop and mobile using the Unity. We will break down a real game for iOS, from asset creation, to building scenes, to scripting in C# (on Windows and Mac), to animation, to testing and finally publishing a game. You will leave this workshop with an understanding of the power of Unity, and the knowledge necessary to start building games. Game development is a thrill, and all developers can benefit from a knowledge of the cutting edge tools.

Foundational Front-End Architecture: Getting the Most out of Frameworks, Libraries, Events, and the Browser Platform (Without Losing Your Mind)

9:00 AM MDT

“There's a new JS framework every week! There's a new JavaScript feature every week! There's a new HTML5 feature every week! We are losing our minds OMG@#$HELPUS!”

Settle down everybody. Shiny new frameworks distract you from the stability offered by the web platform: ES6 is the first major update to JavaScript since 2009, and HTML5 was 18 years in the making! More importantly, few of these innovations significantly change the architecture of web applications — we owe browser innovation and frameworks for that. But since the browser evolved in to a full-blown application runtime, we now need solid front-end architecture, and front-end architects. It's not just about JavaScript, it's about the entire browser platform. And you can't pick frameworks to simplify that platform until you understand its underpinnings.

In this workshop, we will dissect the components of a modern web client into three buckets:

1. Networking: How does data get to and from the client? We will discuss the various underlying APIs and libraries for client-server communication.
2. Rendering: How does the user interface get created and painted? We'll look at the HTML5 APIs for manipulating the DOM, and explain how various frameworks including AngularJS, React, and Polymer regard and manipulate the DOM.
3. Distribution & Maintenance: How does the resulting app get distributed and updated, either on the web or to app stores?

I'll lay the foundations to simplify the complex world of front-end tools, frameworks, and architecture. I'll share patterns to help you manage the complexity of front-end development and back-end integration for modern web clients. And I'll convince you to never again complain about how fast the world of front-end technologies is moving.

Foundational Front-End Architecture: Getting the Most out of Frameworks, Libraries, Events, and the Browser Platform (Without Losing Your Mind)

11:00 AM MDT

“There's a new JS framework every week! There's a new JavaScript feature every week! There's a new HTML5 feature every week! We are losing our minds OMG@#$HELPUS!”

Settle down everybody. Shiny new frameworks distract you from the stability offered by the web platform: ES6 is the first major update to JavaScript since 2009, and HTML5 was 18 years in the making! More importantly, few of these innovations significantly change the architecture of web applications — we owe browser innovation and frameworks for that. But since the browser evolved in to a full-blown application runtime, we now need solid front-end architecture, and front-end architects. It's not just about JavaScript, it's about the entire browser platform. And you can't pick frameworks to simplify that platform until you understand its underpinnings.

In this workshop, we will dissect the components of a modern web client into three buckets:

1. Networking: How does data get to and from the client? We will discuss the various underlying APIs and libraries for client-server communication.
2. Rendering: How does the user interface get created and painted? We'll look at the HTML5 APIs for manipulating the DOM, and explain how various frameworks including AngularJS, React, and Polymer regard and manipulate the DOM.
3. Distribution & Maintenance: How does the resulting app get distributed and updated, either on the web or to app stores?

I'll lay the foundations to simplify the complex world of front-end tools, frameworks, and architecture. I'll share patterns to help you manage the complexity of front-end development and back-end integration for modern web clients. And I'll convince you to never again complain about how fast the world of front-end technologies is moving.

Hybrid Mobile Apps with HTML5: Easier Than You Think

1:30 PM MDT

You don't need massive frameworks to build mobile apps responsive to touch events, that contain fluid animations, or that are easily deployed to app stores. All you really need is a solid grasp of the JavaScript, CSS3, and HTML5 features and APIs that enable a compelling experience.

In this session, I will show some examples of mobile apps built with HTML5 that offer instantaneous handling of touch events such as pan gestures. I'll demonstrate best practices using CSS3 transitions to implement card and panel design patterns typical of mobile user interfaces. And I'll show just how easy it is to extend the device features available to HTML5 using Cordova, packaging a mobile app for app store deployment.

Hybrid Mobile Apps with HTML5: Easier Than You Think

3:15 PM MDT

You don't need massive frameworks to build mobile apps responsive to touch events, that contain fluid animations, or that are easily deployed to app stores. All you really need is a solid grasp of the JavaScript, CSS3, and HTML5 features and APIs that enable a compelling experience.

In this session, I will show some examples of mobile apps built with HTML5 that offer instantaneous handling of touch events such as pan gestures. I'll demonstrate best practices using CSS3 transitions to implement card and panel design patterns typical of mobile user interfaces. And I'll show just how easy it is to extend the device features available to HTML5 using Cordova, packaging a mobile app for app store deployment.

Coding the Future Web Today: Web Components!

5:00 PM MDT

HTML5 hasn't fundamentally changed the way we build web applications — JavaScript frameworks did that. Not so with Web Components! Web Components are the most important update to HTML and the Document Object Model in recent years. They have a major impact on client-side architecture, on framework selection, and on distribution and reuse of code.

In this session, I'll explain to you the four Web Components standards, their current state, and why you should care. I'll give several examples of complex applications built in Web Components, and running in all modern browsers — including a rich mobile game.

Full Stack JavaScript with HTML5, Node.js and MongoDB

9:00 AM MDT

You don't need Node.js or MongoDB to build “full-stack” solutions, but they sure help! This stack is popular for its scalability, its promise of developer productivity, and the capability to develop all components with a single programming language. Not all use cases are a great fit for JavaScript on the server. But love it or hate it, there are valuable lessons and use cases here for all developers.

We'll examine a complete multiuser end-to-end app using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. We'll connect it to a simple Node.js instance using WebSocket. We'll wire up a simple document-oriented persistence layer with MongoDB. And we'll do it all using mostly-vanilla JavaScript to illustrate concepts that don't depend on particular frameworks.

You'll leave this session convinced that full-stack JavaScript has “teeth”, and that it's not all just hype. And whether you intend to use JavaScript, Java, Ruby, or a mix of various frameworks on the server, the architecture of a dynamic HTML5 app will be made transparent and straightforward.

Full Stack JavaScript with HTML5, Node.js and MongoDB

10:45 AM MDT

You don't need Node.js or MongoDB to build “full-stack” solutions, but they sure help! This stack is popular for its scalability, its promise of developer productivity, and the capability to develop all components with a single programming language. Not all use cases are a great fit for JavaScript on the server. But love it or hate it, there are valuable lessons and use cases here for all developers.

We'll examine a complete multiuser end-to-end app using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. We'll connect it to a simple Node.js instance using WebSocket. We'll wire up a simple document-oriented persistence layer with MongoDB. And we'll do it all using mostly-vanilla JavaScript to illustrate concepts that don't depend on particular frameworks.

You'll leave this session convinced that full-stack JavaScript has “teeth”, and that it's not all just hype. And whether you intend to use JavaScript, Java, Ruby, or a mix of various frameworks on the server, the architecture of a dynamic HTML5 app will be made transparent and straightforward.

Pattern Matching Makes You Powerful! (In All Languages!)

1:30 PM MDT

Regular Expressions are an undervalued, underutilized tool in the developer toolbox. Few programming technologies have stood a comparable test of time for their capacity to improve developer productivity, to shortcut complex tasks, to reduce dependency on various libraries, and to encourage code reuse. They also help to teach patterns and improve pattern recognition, not only for code, but for programmers themselves. Competency with regexes will make you a better programmer, regardless of your choice of language or platforms. And it will impress your peers, too!

This workshop will teach you the fundamentals of writing, debugging, and testing PCREs (Perl-compatible Regular Expressions) in multiple programming languages. With hands-on examples we will cover regex syntax, metacharacters, assertions, grouping, quantifiers, greed, capturing, balanced matches, and replacing. We'll compose regexes from scratch to parse some common string formats such as URLs, email addresses, and even JSON. Given enough time, we'll even learn look-around assertions, and examine some creating uses of regexes in the field of natural language processing.

Pattern Matching Makes You Powerful! (In All Languages!)

3:15 PM MDT

Regular Expressions are an undervalued, underutilized tool in the developer toolbox. Few programming technologies have stood a comparable test of time for their capacity to improve developer productivity, to shortcut complex tasks, to reduce dependency on various libraries, and to encourage code reuse. They also help to teach patterns and improve pattern recognition, not only for code, but for programmers themselves. Competency with regexes will make you a better programmer, regardless of your choice of language or platforms. And it will impress your peers, too!

This workshop will teach you the fundamentals of writing, debugging, and testing PCREs (Perl-compatible Regular Expressions) in multiple programming languages. With hands-on examples we will cover regex syntax, metacharacters, assertions, grouping, quantifiers, greed, capturing, balanced matches, and replacing. We'll compose regexes from scratch to parse some common string formats such as URLs, email addresses, and even JSON. Given enough time, we'll even learn look-around assertions, and examine some creating uses of regexes in the field of natural language processing.