I was there. This talk was epic. More importantly, it was an extremely well-argued critique of exactly what's wrong in the JavaScript community right now -- and what to do about it, not just bitching.
I'm going to have to start looking into this language a lot more. For many years I've dismissed it as a bit of a gimmick (in the same light as say, vbscript) but things like the promoteJS movement and AJAX have really changed the way JS is being portrayed
Chiming in with the touchy-feely watery eyes here. My job was to talk Chris off stage after his talk and I didn't find any sane words for a bit until I started rambling to round off JSConf.eu. It makes me very happy to have Chris close it really with such an important speech.
I loved the message conveyed in the talk, as it addresses a lot of my concerns about JavaScript's exposure to new developers - my primary one being the Google search results. My only real hangup was with Chris' presentation style and tone; it was almost a complete turn-off for me. JavaScript needs more enthusiastic evangelists like Christian Heilmann, not its own Martin Luther King Jr. JavaScript is not oppressed. It just isn't well represented.
This is obviously not clear from the video, but in the context of the conference, this worked pretty well. The other talks we had were fun and energetic (just wait until we get to release Jed Schmidt's talk on Fab.js). Chris's talk was the closing keynote and using the presidential speech style worked very well; sadly that context is lost with the standalone video.
It makes much more sense now! Thanks Jan. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the released content. Events like this are really important, and it's a shame that we can't all make it out to all of them.
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