ANGULARCONNECT 2015

It’s been over a week since we attended the AngularConnect Conference at the ExCel Arena and what an event it was! The organisers claimed it was the largest event of its kind, definitely in Europe - this was 100% proven as myself and my colleague Scott Chisholm sat through the initial Keynote speech amongst 1000 other tech enthusiasts. Although this is only a drop in the “Angular Ocean” (approximately 1.1 million users worldwide) it was still some feat to get some of the best minds in the business all under one roof!

The conference included around 40 separate sessions, and as the name suggests, they were specifically centred on AngularJS, including some of its forefathers – Brad Green, Igor Minar & Pete Darwin. We have written this blog in order to share what we discovered and give our thoughts on how the market will grow in 2016, especially from a recruitment perspective.

Firstly, Angular2.0. Once this reaches Beta stage (hopefully 2016), we predict it to be the framework of choice. It appears to fix many of the “problems” of version 1 – the templating syntax is cleaner, its faster and more scalable, it loses a lot of the redundant core directive and is a lot more modular. Fears that the tool will not be easily transferable have also been slashed through the use of Web Workers however, meticulous planning & dedicated time and effort – will still be required!

Secondly, from many of the sessions it was clear to see that “Software Engineering” is penetrating Front End Development. Jargon including OO and SOLID principles, functional/functional reactive programming and encapsulation were frequently heard amongst the audience. With Angular2.0 using features from tools such as RxJS and immutable.JS (both functionally based libraries) it appears the Front End development world is also going “functional crazy”!

The resulting effect, well… In 2016 we expect a significant number of developers using tools such as TypeScript (also seen to become a major player), ES6, RxJS, immutable.JS, oAuth 2.0, Ionic.JS. The inevitable product of this is that 2016 will show an immeasurable increase in the volume of requirements here in London seeking engineers with knowledge or experience in these programming tools. If you want to hear more about our experience at AngularConnect and how it may affect your organisation or career then please get in touch.

We would like to say a massive thank you to the organisers, specifically Ed Conolly and Josh Moont, who despite being incredibly busy were at hand to answer any questions we had about the event or future groups.

Matthew McKenna
Team Lead | Technology
[email protected]
0203 301 9930

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