The art and pain of teaching JavaScript – my talk at <head>

I just delivered my talk on teaching, learning and writing JavaScript for use. The slides are available on slideshare below and if you don’t want to sign up, I’ve also put them up on S3.

[slideshare id=695060&doc=javascripttutorialshead-1225047967659425-9&w=425]

I’ve covered the different types of JavaScript consumers: Users, Tinkerers (explaining that there is nothing derogative about this term), Implementers and Developers. I then started to explain where these people come from, what they expect and how we can reach them.

Other topics where how to battle successful but outdated information, ideas how to keep systems upgradeable and generally to consider moving away from an “OMG Ponies! Technology! Let me show you what I can do” to a “Here’s why I love using this and this is how I did it” approach.

Hopefully I inspired some people. I thoroughly enjoyed the session, although it is weird to talk to a monitor :)

Tags: headconference, javascript, maintainability, teaching