This summer in Philadelphia, PA there will be great talks delivered by three people that Eldarion is proud to count as part of our team. You should check these talks out!

I have always loved grouping things in threes.

There is a completeness to it.

It can even be considered magical. If you don't believe me then take it up with Schoolhouse Rock:

Well, this year, Eldarion has three team members, giving three different talks, on three different topic areas (development, testing, and design).

Building JSON APIs with Django / Pinax

Brian Rosner

Javascript is a language we simply cannot ignore. It isn't just Javascript too. Objective-C, Swift and Java are all languages we are finding we need to work with to meet client expectations about a web app.

The role Django (and Python) plays in this new world is becoming a bit more limited. There are plenty of great efforts to get Python running everywhere, but this talk isn't about any of that. This talk is about building the API all of these frontends need to communicate with to drive persistent and business logic.

pinax-api was originally built to serve the needs of a particular client at Eldarion, but later pulled out as its own app. It provides a simple and modern interface to building an API with Django. At its core, pinax-api leverages the JSON:API spec that was built out of Ember.

The talk will cover:

  • what is JSON:API
  • JSON:API in pinax-api
  • API primitives provided by pinax-pai
  • how pinax-api leverages Django to its fullest
  • automatic documentation generation using API Blueprint
  • why not Django REST Framework?

Just Enough Typography

Joni Trythall

Great typography isn’t just for designers. Words are everywhere and make up so much of what the web is all about. It gives us to the power to determine the overall readability and feelings created by our site or product. While design resources can often be limited, good typography is too important to compromise. ​ Design is 95% typography … or something like that. Having a grasp on what makes for pleasant, easy to read typography that reinforces your brand is the first step towards building an amazing, impactful experience.

Together we will explore typography fundamentals:

  • Sizing, spacing, and rhythm to make all of our type feel cohesive.
  • How to improve readability and encourage the user to read.
  • Type families and different styles.
  • Choosing and pairing fonts, how many to use, and when to use them.
  • Much more!

These typography basics will help you better understand why some typefaces just don’t work and give you some go-to solutions for when the designer is out sick (or has gone crazy). We’ll learn a bunch but not too much, it will be just enough.

Rub-a-Dub Rubber Duck: Don’t Be Afraid to Debug!

Anna Ossowski

Everyone of us knows this scenario, it's part of the daily life of a programmer: You build something and it doesn’t work. You run into a bug, you find a problem, you break your code - and then you have to figure out how to fix it again. This can take 5 minutes, several hours, sometimes even several days. Sometimes you get really frustrated and are about to give up but when you finally find the solution it's the greatest feeling in the world. Do you want to learn how to proceed when your code doesn’t work? Do you want to learn how you can become a better problem solver? Do you want to learn how a rubber duck can help you? Then this talk is for you :)

In this talk I will present strategies on how to proceed when you run into a bug or other coding problems. I will also talk about what you can do in order to prevent frustration and how you can learn to be more confident when encountering bugs. My goal is to show that bugs are nothing to be scared of, that you can fix (almost) everything and shouldn’t be afraid of breaking things, and that debugging can be easier than you think it might be if you approach it the right way. Breaking things is the first step to learning how to fix them!