Rita Castro

Recently I was asked: “but Rita, aren’t you a Software Developer? Isn’t you job to write code? Why do you keep pondering about people?” My answer was simple - “because it is not up to a person to build quality software. It takes a village”. Software Development and People can not be seen as two separate concerns by companies. There is a natural entanglement between the two of them that I would like to explore a bit in this session.

Recently I was asked: “but Rita, aren’t you a Software Developer? Isn’t you job to write code? Why do you keep pondering about people?” My answer was simple - “because it is not up to a person to build quality software. It takes a village”. Software Development and People can not be seen as two separate concerns by companies. There is a natural entanglement between the two of them that I would like to explore a bit in this session.

Building products using Test Driven Development with React and Atomic Design has become my modus operandi over the years. Some products tend to grow in complexity and it is crucial to have a good workflow to keep them healthy and scalable. The time has come to add another player to the game - enter Micro-Frontends. This talk will share a practical example of this setup, some lessons learned and the bumps that were hit to get there.

Accessibility has been web development's ugly duckling for quite some time now. I often get asked, "when should you test for a11y in your apps?" My answer is simple, "right from the start!". Regardless of the framework considered - React, Svelte, Vue, YourOwn™️ - as developers we are in a privileged position to help the ugly duckling grow into a beautiful swan. How? By diving deep into the pond and harnessing the power of Javascript APIs to build the right components for your web apps. And how can do you know you are building them right? By pairing Test Driven Development with the Testing Library family. Ready to grow your web apps into swans?

To mock or not to mock, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler for the code of the programmers to engage with spies and stubs in outrageous tests, or to take the real components against a sea of timeouts, and enduring, to validate their code: to commit, to push.

Have you heard about Atomic Design? How about Extreme Programming and Test Driven Development? For sure you have heard about React - a few things, I bet. In this talk you will get some insight on leveraging the power of Atomic Design to build the right product (using React, duh!) and capitalize on Extreme Programming and Test Driven Development to build it right ( exploring the React Testing Library).