MCB Digital Factory x Front-end Coders – February Meetup 2023

The first frontend coders meetup of the year happened at MCB Digital factory on the 25 Feb. We had been planning this one since a few weeks and it was only possible with the help of Chervine Bhiwoo from the MCB side.

I reached there around 9.30 and met with the hosts who were already on site. Moments later we had a nice crowed going and everything was set to start. The conference room we used for this meetup was really charming and cozy. I especially appreciated the fact that it was somewhat soundproof, which made listened to the speakers' event more pleasant.

As usual, I started the meetup by speaking about who the frontend coders are and what we are trying to accomplish as a community.

Promises vs Observables by Mervyn Manillal

Mervyn is from MCB and this was his first time joining us as a speaker.

This was a fascinating topic and I learned about how they differ and when to use which method of waiting for data.

Sponsor Segment

Chervine presented how The Digital Factory runs its teams and projects. It was honestly a refreshing way to present a company and make it appealing to the audience.

It was the opposite of a corporate pitch and something that clearly appeals to engineers. I was quite impressed with all the interesting projects in the works and to hear how they handle some apps Mauritians use daily.

Visual UI Regression Testing with BackstopJS by Abdallah Yashir

Abdallah is someone who is very active on his social media, where he posts captivating bits about programming and tech. Since he seemed to have an interest in testing and sharing his expertise, I reached out, and he gladly accepted to do the talk.

We learned about the different types of tests that can be done and how visually regression testing can be useful in certain scenarios.

Lunch

As usual, lunch was awesome. Thanks to MCB for sponsoring the Pizzas for our attendees. We had a fun networking session.

I met Nicolas for the first time, and we had a nice chat about frontend technologies. It's always encouraging to meet new people at these meetups and hear their story about how they got into tech and what stack they prefer. It makes all the effort of organizing meetups worth it.

Frontend Updates by Sandeep Ramgolam

Since it had been 3 months since the last meetup, a lof of things changed in the frontend worlds, and this presentation was a little summary of what changes happened and how they could affect us.

I spoke about :

• Turbopack
• Apple finally allowing PWAs
• Qwik - just the TLDR;
• Leptos - Rust on the Frontend
• Signals - fine grained reactivity
• TanStack

This was a fun interactive session as usual.

Quiz and Giveaways!

I prepared a fun kahoot session during which we gave away 2 jetbrains licenses! Congrats to the winners.