Halfstack is a really interesting conference which is increasingly heading into a space that is unrepentantly about hobby projects, the love of technology and amateurism. But also a few talks by professional developer advocates or relationship managers.

It happens on Brick Lane and has an open bar in the afternoon. You might think that this is either hip or insufferable. Both opinions might be right.

In terms of work relevant material there was an interesting if often incoherent talk on the phases of the event loop which seems to be a popular topic but which was full of new information for me (being pretty basic I suppose); a sales pitch for the developer experience in Deno and using Tensorflow JS to do image recognition in mode.

Christian Heilmann has switched from giving talks on developer tools in the browser to the state of developer employment and this time highlighted the dilemma facing junior developer roles. While demand has fallen back for developers (compared to the incredible growth in demand for the previous five to ten years) it has done dramatically for entry-level roles and less so for experienced developers.

When the industry turns off the pipeline like this the effects tend to take years to feed through, as experienced people retire or switch to other roles there are less people taking their place as entrants have responded to the market signal and are doing something else.

The industry gamble here is that AI is going to make up the gap but the risk is whether the people using the AI are going to have a deep enough understanding of what is being created that they can support and maintain the result.

Maintaining codebases was in a way the theme of the talk, with all the emphasis on producing more code with the help of AIs is anyone thinking about what will happen to these digital products in five years time?

The real highlight of the day was a talk that combined the history of the 808 and 909 with a reminder of how crazy some of the browser API support is. Did you know that your browser probably supports MIDI?

According to the talk, you can read the slides online, the 808 and 909 were both flops on release that became classics after hitting the bargain bin so that a different kind of musician could access them and apply a different aesthetic sense to their capabilities.

The talk then used web APIs to recreate the 808 sound with samples via the ToneJS library and to trigger them with a USB connected device (less well supported). That was followed up with a mini-sequencer that was good enough to do a little live performance.

The day ended with a talk on using technology in murder mystery parties which was a bit crazy and obsessional and interesting in the way that people who have Gone Too Far can be. There was a bit where a trunk was being wired up to the mains where I thought the biggest danger might be the risk of death by homemade electronics.

Tickets for 2025 are available and next year’s conference and it has just recently been confirmed that enough pre-sales have been made to ensure the venue can be booked and that therefore next year’s conference is definite. In a period of declining sponsorship and stretched personal budgets that’s a vote of confidence in the conference from its audience.