I attended Big Sky Dev Con for the first time this year and, to quote directly from the web site, is:
A technology conference put on by Montana Programmers held each Summer in Bozeman, Montana. BSDC is dedicated to sharing knowledge with the Montana community about Software Development, Tech Business, Design, and User Experience.
While the above may be true, the running joke during the conference was this was more a htmx conference and, to be honest, was the main reason for me attending especially since I’m the creator/maintainer of the HTMX gem, htmx Remove library, and htmx Select library. The htmx influence is due to Big Sky Software being the force behind htmx while also being located in Bozeman, Montana.
The following are a few notes and learnings captured from the conference that might be of interest. I don’t detail everything, only the ones that struck me the most.
Video
The full recording of the entire conference can be found via these videos:
Morning
Afternoon
💡 I’ll refer to these recordings in the Talks section below by using start and finish times so you can track accordingly.
Talks
Below are the following talks that stood out to me and I wanted to highlight further.
The htmx guide to gonzo open source marketing by Carson Gross
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Day: Morning
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Start: 19:28
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Finish: 42:40
Carson Gross — the creator of htmx — shared insights and lessons learned related to marketing your open source projects. Here’s a few notes:
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Be positive. Super important.
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Use humor to amplify your message/presence.
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Write essays and posts to amplify.
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Reach out internationally.
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Social media wants drama. 😢
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Memes work but you need to find your voice.
This struck a cord with me as I’ve been marketing open source projects for decades and came away with new tactics to apply moving forward in order to extend my reach.
The Life & Death of htmx by Alex Petros
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Day: Morning
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Start: 44:30
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Finish: 1:06:56
Alex Petros is one of the core maintainers of the htmx library. I liked the forward thinking of what htmx means in the ecosystem at large and how htmx could be used to influence enhancements to the HTML specification. Here’s a few notes:
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HTML should support PUT, PATCH, and DELETE for links, forms and buttons.
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Buttons should have action attributes.
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We should push to have these features implemented into the HTML specification as currently being done via the Triptych proposal.
This is a great mindset to have for your own open source work in terms of influencing change and better ways of developing software within the entire software engineering community as a whole. Ultimately, if HTML standards evolved further, we might not even need htmx at all.
htmx sucks and now you’re gonna hear about it by Ryan Florence
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Day: Morning
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Start: 2:06:45
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Finish: 2:39:45
This talk was a counter argument to htmx by recommending React or, more specifically, Inertia which adds even more JavaScript to your stack to abstract away the network layer entirely.
The problem is that I want less JavaScript rather that more JavaScript in my stack. Plus, advancements in HTML, CSS, modern browsers, and so much more has been allowing us to do more with less which leads to smaller teams, tighter communication, and faster deploys. React and Inertia are so heavyweight and unnecessary in so many situations to the point where I think the industry has lost it’s mind supporting/promoting frameworks like this.
Abusing Hypermedia by Nathaniel Maile & Jon-Michael Hartway
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Day: Morning
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Start: 1:09:00
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Finish: 1:41:42
This was an astonishingly disturbing talk using htmx to build Flappybird and Pong clones in the worst possible way. The absurdity of the entire presentation is meant to be funny by looking at code so bad that the dark humor stems from the horror of it all. At one point, an audience member asked "Who hurt you?" which summed things up rather well.
You can’t build very interactive web apps without SPAs…and other htmx myths by Anthony Alaribe
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Day: Afternoon
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Start: 2:32:46
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Finish: 2:58:48
This talk had several tips and tricks. The first was calling attention to Google’s Workbox when dealing with Service Workers. The following is an example of using Workbox to configure your service workers so you can avoid a bit of boilerplate setup:
// > npm i -g workbox
// > workbox generateSW workbox-config-js
// workbox-config.js
module.exports = {
globDirectory: "static/public/",
globPatterns: [
"**/*.{css,woff2,_hs,js,svg}"
],
swDest: "static/public/sw.js",
ignoreURLParametersMatching: [
/utm_/,
/^fbclid$/
],
runtimeCaching: [
{
urlPattern: /https:\/\/kit\.fontawesome\.com\/e0cb5637ed\.js.*/,
handler: "StaleWhileRevalidate"
},
{
urlPattern: /https:\/\/unpkg\. com\/ .*/,
handler: "CacheFirst"
}
]
};Another was with the HTML Speculation Rules API where you can configure and target document URLs which is a boon for Multi-Page Applications (MPAs). The following is an example of how you can instruct the browser to behave when pre-rendering and pre-fetching:
<script type="speculationrules">
{
"prerender": [
{
"where": {
"and": [
{"href_matches": "/*"},
{"not": {"href_matches": "/wp-admin"}},
{"not": {"href _matches": "/*\?*(^|8)add-to-cart=*"}, "not": {"selector_matches": ".do-not-prerender"}},
{"not": {"selector_matches": "[rel~=nofollow]"}}
]
}
}
],
"prefetch": [
{
"where": {"not": {"href _matches": "/*"}},
"eagerness": "moderate"
}
]
}
</script>The APItoolkit service is also interesting and worth checking out.
ℹ️ For a deeper dive on all of the above (including all aspects of Anthony Alaribe’s talk), check out his htmx essay on the same subject: You Can’t Build Interactive Web Apps Except as Single Page Applications… And Other Myths.
Conclusion
I was surprised there wasn’t a spot for a job board and/or lightning talk aspect of the conference in order to network even further. I definitely tried to talk to as many folks as possible. I was hoping, due to the influence of htmx and other companies moving into the area, that there might be more opportunity. Unfortunately, there is still a lot of old tech with many folks having trouble finding work. In one, case I met someone who has been looking for work for six months now. Yeah, I know, the job scene is abysmal. This is a world wide problem and not specific to Montana.
Overall, I enjoyed the conference:
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The weather was great.
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The venue was spacious (despite being in a church).
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The food was good (we had Jimmy John’s boxed lunches).
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The location was beautiful due to Bozeman being a ski resort, college, and mountain town. I definitely enjoyed reliving my youth by driving in and out of the mountains during sunrise and sunset.
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Got to meet the htmx team.
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Met new folks and, who knows, might come back to speak in the future. 🚀