Gleam is a statically typed language that runs on the Erlang virtual machine. From distance, it looks like a love child of Go and Elixir (count me in!)

One neat language feature is a todo keyword. First-class syntax to mark a piece of code as work in progress and to stop the compiler from yelling at your half-implemented code.

fn favourite_number() -> Int {
  // The type annotations says this returns an Int,
  // but we don't need to implement it yet.
  todo
}
 
pub fn main() {
  favourite_number() * 2
}

↗ gleam.run

Two weeks ago, I spoke at FFConf. Yes! Me! Last year, I made a little shy appearance in one of Sophie's slides, but it was the big deal this year.

I mentioned in a toot a while back how special FFConf is for me. Years ago, my friend Paul told me about it, and it turned out to be a life-changing conference.

I was disheartened with the industry and tech community at the time (I think this was in 2016). The talks I saw and the people I met throughout the years were the inspiration and acceptance I desperately needed to find.

I even found my current job by chatting with people there. Someone told me about this agency, and I should say "hi". I did, and it turns out they were hiring!

As you can imagine, I was over the moon that I was invited to speak there after applying to their call for papers.

The topic was the same as The State of the Browser, but I changed the slides and demo based on feedback received and my own perception after watching the video. I also added a new demo at the end!

One of my last slides was a thank you to one of the talks from the previous years that really moved me at the time. In 2018, Tim Holman's talk showed us some enjoyable demos. Then he compiled what he learned from building some seemingly "useless things". He ends with "any idea you have has value". So there I was, on a stage, sharing what I learned from building a karaoke in the browser.

Unlike the previous years at FFConf, I was extremely nervous this year. My head was over the place during the day. I was the penultimate speaker, so I could relax and enjoy Salma's talk.

Now, I plan to watch all the videos of the other talks when they come out so that I can properly enjoy them.

Trys Mudford took photos of the day and wrote a lovely recap. So did Amy and Remy!

This has been one of the highlights of my (quite crappy) year. I hope I contributed to people feeling as happy at the end of the day as I felt all these years as an attendee. Thank you to everyone who came to say hi before and after the talk! My heart is full!

If you saw the talk and have any feedback/criticism/suggestions, please use the form below this post and share it with me. The form won't appear if you're part of the cool people who are reading this via RSS feed hehe.