2023 WeAreDevelopers World Congress

The conference is a mix of lectures, a classic trade fair and a job platform. This is therefore not only an opportunity to listen to exciting presentations, but also to get in touch with the speakers and a number of companies. There is no fixed theme of the Congress. Instead, it covers the entire spectrum of software development and related areas. From programming languages, developer tools, testing and software security to artificial intelligence and experience from the world of game programming, everything was represented.

Some well-known speakers at this year's conference were:

• Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Founder of the World Wide Web and, for example, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).
• Dan Abramov: Software engineer in the React team at Meta and developer of React Redux.
• Anu Bharadwaj: President of Atlassian.
• Stormy Peters: VP of Communities at GitHub.
• Joel Spolsky: Founder of StackOverflow, Trello, Glitch, and HASH.
• John Romero: Award-winning game developer and known for DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D, for example.

The first day of the conference was marked by a keynote by Sir Tim Berners-Lee opened on the main stage. He presented a journey through the history of the World Wide Web and pleaded for better protection of private data when using artificial intelligence. A variety of talks and discussion panels were then offered throughout the day on a total of thirteen stages in two large exhibition halls. Hundreds of companies were represented between the stages with small and large exhibition stands, which invited people to talks and various interactions, such as small games or puzzles. The robot dog “Spot” from robotics company Boston Dynamics could also be admired while running through the exhibition halls.

In the evening, on the main stage, the first final of CODE100, Europe's ultimate programming competition. Finally, the official congress party took place, at which DJ Sam Feldt hung up.

The second day also continued the format of the first day of the conference and offered a wealth of exciting talks. The conference was concluded with a keynote by Joel Spolsky, which gave an insight into the five technological periods (MS-DOS, Windows, WWW, social and mobile) of his career, and the prospect of Congress next year in the same place.

Highlights of the conference

The highlight of the conference for me was definitely the talk “React from Another Dimension” by Dan Abramov, who is well known for his numerous contributions to the React ecosystem. In his presentation, he talked about a possible representation of React in 2003. He posed the question of whether React would have existed at all at this time and what it would look like or how it would have developed over time. His assumption was that JavaScript was initially popular on the server at that time before it was widely used in browsers. He showed the demo of his code in Internet Explorer under Windows XP in true style. In summary, he presented the relatively new concept of React Server Components in a different way.

Stefan Baumgartner, Senior Product Architect at Dynatrace and known for his books “TypeScript in 50 Lessons” and “The TypeScript Cookbook,” loosely questioned the type safety of TypeScript in his presentation. Using a few small examples, he showed common and profound problems when using TypeScript and discussed tradeoffs, workarounds and suggested solutions. Of course, he didn't forget to mention why TypeScript is a favorite programming language of his choice.

Other exciting presentations at the conference covered topics such as passwordless authentication using WebAuthn and passkeys, reducing the CO2 footprint of web applications and writing greener code. There were also interesting talks in the program about the migration to a declarative user interface on Android using Jetpack Compose and the JavaScript and TypeScript programming languages.

Personal conclusion

The WeAreDevelopers World Congress It was the first conference for me since 2019 and the biggest event so far. The size was very impressive, but it also took some getting used to at the beginning. I also had to get used to the volume due to the many participants and stages first. Overall, however, the atmosphere was very pleasant and it was a very interesting experience. Unfortunately, due to the program planning, I was unable to attend all the lectures I had previously planned for myself on site. However, all presentations were recorded so that you can watch them again at any time.

In addition to exciting insights, I was also able to take away insights and information for my daily work from the conference. It was a highlight to see some of the most famous personalities in the area of software development in person. In particular Sir Tim Bernes-Lee and Dan Abramov are to be mentioned here. In conclusion, I can therefore only recommend a conference visit to everyone.