Technology: A Means to an End with Thibault Imbert Technology is fascinating, but should this be what drives us? What are the things you can do to differentiate yourself today? With all that noise, what are things you should be looking at? In this talk, Thibault Imbert will look at the different technologies available today to build amazing experiences and what’s coming tomorrow. He will focus on the importance of learning, crafting and getting out of your comfort zone and most importantly, to never be religious about a technology. Presented at FITC Toronto 2014 on April 27-29, 2014 More info at www.FITC.ca

1. Technology,
a means to
an end.
Thibault Imbert

2. 1996 - Discovered BASIC on my dad’s T07.
1998 - Started playing with Flash in my bedroom
!
2004 - Teaching programming
!
2008 - Joined Adobe (France)
!
2010 - Moved to San Francisco (PM for Flash Player)
!
2014 - Working on next-gen web authoring tools/services
projectparfait.adobe.com

3. CSS Shapes

4. Blend modes

5. Masking

7. justinjackson.ca/words.html

8. Technology
to serve a goal.

9. Focus on the goal, implementation is a detail.

10. detail.

12. C++, Objective-C, ActionScript, JavaScript, Java, C#…

13. Don’t place a technology.
Use the best one to do the best job.

14. DHTML!
Flash

15. Ajax!
Flash

16. Silverlight!
Flash

17. Familiar?
Native!
HTML/JS!

18. It is about the result, the end goal.

22. Technologies, come and go.

23. So I should not care?

24. Be passionate, stay curious,
and always assume you don’t know.

26. "The most dangerous thought you can have as a creative
person is to think you know what you're doing.” - Bret Victor

27. JavaScript will win.
C++ will win.
Obj-C will win.
Dart will win.
Why should one win?
There is no safe bet.

28. By being religious, you barricade yourself.

29. You stop learning and start having
preconceived ideas.

30. JavaScript is for “scripting” only.

32. asmjs.org
an extraordinarily optimizable, low-level subset of JavaScript

33. JavaScript is not object-oriented.

34. ES6

35. //
entities.js
module
entities
{
export
class
Person
{
!
private
message
=
"Hi
my
name
is
";
!
constructor
(public
name,
public
age,
public
town){
this.name
=
name;
this.age
-­‐
age;
this.town
=
town;
}
!
talk(){
return
this.message
+
this.name;
}
!
get
isAbove18(){
return
this.age
>=
18;
}
}

36. But what if I want static-typing?

37. www.typescriptlang.org

38. //
entities.js
module
entities
{
export
class
Person
{
!
private
message
:string
=
"Hi
my
name
is
";
!
constructor
(public
name:
string,
public
age:
number,
public
town:
string){
this.name
=
name;
this.age
=
age;
this.town
=
town;
}
!
talk(){
return
this.message
+
this.name;
}
!
get
isAbove18(){
return
this.age
>=
18;
}
}

39. Which will generate plain ES5 compatible JS

40. var
Person
=
(function
()
{
function
Person(name,
age,
town)
{
this.name
=
name;
this.age
=
age;
this.town
=
town;
this.message
=
"Hi
my
name
is
";
this.name
=
name;
this.age
-­‐
age;
this.town
=
town;
}
Person.prototype.talk
=
function
()
{
return
this.message
+
this.name;
};
!
Object.defineProperty(Person.prototype,
"isAbove18",
{
get:
function
()
{
return
this.age
>=
18;
},
enumerable:
true,
configurable:
true
});
return
Person;
})();

41. Challenge, run the original Space Invaders ROM in JS

42. Ported in an hour to JavaScript

44. Chose the best option (for me)
to get the job done.

45. C# is for Windows developers only

50. Xamarin

52. C++ is way too low-level.

53. C++11

54. #include
<iostream>
#include
<stdint.h>
#include
<iostream>
#include
<vector>
#include
<algorithm>
!
int
main(int
argc,
const
char
*
argv[])
{
std::vector<uint32_t>
data
=
{
234,
76767,
43,
343,
4322,
33,
122
};
std::sort(data.begin(),
data.end(),
[]
(uint32_t
a,
uint32_t
b)
{
return
a
<
b;
});
for
(auto
i
=
data.begin();
i
<
data.end();
i++)
{
std::cout
<<
*i
<<
std::endl;
}
class
MyClass
{
public:
MyClass(size_t
size)
:
m_size(size)
{
}
MyClass(const
char
*str)
:
MyClass(strlen(str))
{
}
size_t
Size()
{
return
m_size;
}
private:
size_t
m_size;
};
MyClass
obj("Hello!");
std::cout
<<
obj.Size()
<<
std::endl;
return
0;
}

55. I am a web guy, doing scripting, cool
native stuff is hard.

57. Starry Night by Petros Vrellis

58. openFrameworks

59. Functional programming languages are not for real world usage.

60. Imperative programming is:
I want a latte.
Heat some milk.
Put it into a cup.
Brew some coffee with a stovetop Moka pot.
Pour the coffee into the heated milk.
Thank you.

61. Functional programming is:
I want a latte.
Thank you.

62. Have a look at F#

63. let numbers = [ 0..2..20 ]
!
val numbers : int list = [0; 2; 4; 6; 8; 10; 12; 14; 16; 18; 20]

64. var value = Math.abs ( Math.round ( Math.sqrt ( 3.56 ) ) );
let result =
3.56
|> System.Math.Sqrt
|> System.Math.Round
|> System.Math.Abs

65. let numbers = [ 0..3..30 ]
let square x = x * x
!
let sumSquare nums =
let mutable buffer = 0
for i in nums do
buffer <- buffer + square i
buffer
!
let result = sumSquare numbers

66. let sumSquare nums =
nums
|> Seq.map ( fun x -> x * x )
|> Seq.sum

67. Multicore and web apps? No way.

68. &

69. myPA
=
[1,
2,
3];
//
incrementation
is
parallelized
on
the
GPU
myPlusPA
=
myPA.mapPar(val
=>
val
+
1);

70. myPA
=
[1,
2,
3];
//
incrementation
is
parallelized
on
the
GPU
myPlusPA
=
myPA.mapPar(val
=>
val
+
1);

71. OpenCL (behind the scene)

72. Multicore and web apps? No way.

73. River Trail
bit.ly/qme8BY

74. You may never use these, but they will
make you a better developer, so keep
learning new stuff.

75. Creativity, but stepping back from technology.

78. Goal
Experiment
Fail
Iterate

82. Not good!
Not good
Looks good!
Looks good!

84. Success is not an event, it is a process.
James Clear.

85. @thibault_imbert
Thank you!