We were at the vuejs.de conference! Why modern JS-based frameworks like Vue.js have become indispensable for the visual representation of data science and UI and what we learned about it in Berlin – that’s what we want to tell you about in this blog post.
According to the State of Javascript survey, Vue.js has been one of the most popular and well-known frontend frameworks for several years now. Particularly noteworthy are the low barrier to entry, the large and active community and the fact that behind the project is not one of the tech giants, but originally only Vue founder Evan You. For these reasons, we at statworx have been involved with the framework for a long time and therefore had great anticipation for the Vue.js Conf 2022 in Berlin.
Our three main impressions of the conference
The conference consisted mainly of half-hour talks, which through their diversity showed the wide range of applications and different uses of Vue.js frontends. More details about the talks can be found here. To reflect the impressions of the conference, we summarize our key takeaways below.
The Vue.js community shows itself to be open, friendly and well organized
The competent speakers are to a large extent members of the Vue.js core team. This and the live Q&A session at the beginning with Evan You, the founder of Vue.js, provided consistently high quality and relevant contributions. Among other topics, this included the latest upgrade from vue2 to vue3 and how to deal with legacy projects and how to transition them.
The venue “Bolle Festsäle” was also a good choice as it provided a friendly and lively atmosphere. The organizing team also proved to have a good hand for food and drink, so varied tasting was provided every hour. So the stage for a successful conference was set right from the start!
The many live coding sessions within the talks also showed that the community, characterized by the open source idea, is open-minded, helpful and open to discussion. The fact that even members of the core team make simple mistakes while coding (surely only due to the fact that they are coding live in front of a large audience) also encourages them not to be too critical of their own mistakes.
Testing increases confidence in developed frontends
The contributions of Debbie O’Brien and Markus Oberlehner dealt with the topic of testing frontends. The speakers’ statement that testing is an important component that should not be neglected but should be integrated from the beginning of a project, met with open ears and agreement in the audience. In addition to the common tools Cypress and Vitest, new tools such as Playwright were presented and tips and tricks for their use were discussed. It became clear that there is no “one” tool that can do everything, but that the combination and goal-oriented application is decisive. In addition to testing the functionality, testing should often provide fast feedback so that bugs and errors can be found and corrected quickly.
Thus, it is not only a matter of “how” testing is done, but also of “what” is done. In the subsequent discussion with Markus Oberlehner, our attitude that testing – like so many things – does not have a pattern was confirmed. Instead, the experience and expertise of a developer are required to write the right tests with the right tools.
Training also takes place during the break
During the lunch and coffee breaks, there were other opportunities for education and networking in addition to the catering. For example, there was a “live hacking” of a demo webpage that exploited a security vulnerability to get the administrator’s access token out. The exploited vulnerability was the unverified user input. Malicious HTML code was inserted into the user input field instead of login credentials, which, when executed, accessed sensitive information such as the access token. Since the user input was left unchecked, the malicious HTML code could be executed. This type of attack is called a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack. The demo showed the importance of careful sanitization and validation of user input by developers to protect against such attacks.
From the conference back to everyday life
The well-paced presentations of the one-day vuejs.de conference made for a full program that leaves you wanting more. Therefore, we return with new ideas and a zest for action and try to let the impressions take effect. True to one of our statworx company values “We grow though challenge”, we will continue to work on our projects to reconcile the numerous and complex tasks. Because:
A well-designed, tested and secure frontend can immensely increase the value of a Data Science application, as it is the first (and often the only) contact for the user to the underlying model.