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Front-End Engineering

2-for-1: STAR Apps: Design Systems, TypeScript, Apollo GraphQL, and React / Zero to Eighty: Getting your testing initiative off the line

Shawn Wang    Nicole Tibaldi   

Shawn Wang – STAR Apps: Design Systems, TypeScript, Apollo GraphQL, and React (Intermediate)

A new front-end stack is emerging. They involve building Design Systems for visual consistency, using TypeScript for internal consistency, Apollo GraphQL for data manipulation, and server- or statically-rendered React for data representation. In this talk we explore how these trends fit together, and _why_ leading product teams from AirBnb to the New York Times are embracing them.

Talk structure:

  • Introducing and defining Design Systems and the tools used
  • Introducing TypeScript and why teams have embraced it for large React apps
  • Introducing Apollo and why it has become the leading GraphQL client for React
  • Discussing server-side (Next.js) vs static (Gatsby) React and React is growing at ~70% annually
  • Exploring combinations:
    • Design Systems + React: React-sketchapp, Framer X
    • GraphQL + React: Discussing the componentization of Data
    • TypeScript + React: Documentation, and static checking vs proptypes
  • Inviting the audience to explore how these trends are expressions of a deeper underlying desire for better tooling that matches the needs of product engineering teams.

Nicole Tibaldi – Zero to Eighty: Getting your testing initiative off the line (Introductory)

In my last role, my team’s frontend codebase lacked any meaningful test coverage. Our release process was painful, requiring us to complete nearly one hundred manual QA steps to give us even the smallest amount of confidence that new features didn’t break existing functionality. In a few short months, our tests grew to be automated, fast, stable, and nobody complained about having to write them! As I recount the tale of how I became the team’s “test captain” and led the team to testing bliss, you’ll learn about mistakes we made, how we changed course when needed, the milestones we achieved, and some general dos and don’ts for creating better habits within your team.