Christian Alfoni: If We Didn't Spend So Much on IE Support, We Could Be Taking Vacations on Mars ReactiveConf Follow Sep 25, 2015 · 4 min read

Reactive Conference is bringing you an interview with one of our speakers Christian Alfoni.

What’s your personal elevator pitch?

I am probably the least academic developer you will ever meet. I have no background from school doing programming and I sucked at math… and physics. I am the guy who states that you can divide 1 by 1 and get two, because if you divide one apple one time, you get two parts. But I do not think it means that I am stupid, I just have a tendency to see things from a different perspective. Sometimes that is good, sometimes not so good. In the world of JavaScript I think it is a good thing. It is really difficult to build applications and I believe we often have to think outside the box to make the best out of our platform. I hope that I can at least contribute with different perspectives, and even deliver something useful from time to time!

How did you end up being a web developer?

I had a friend who got me into making my first webpage. You know the one with black background, yellow text and a counter? I really liked building things and HTML was a fun way to do it. After school I got a job selling mobile phones, later working on projects delivering GSM solutions to companies. Then I worked as a support person at the GSM operator delivering those solutions. On some issues I had to talk to the people developing these solutions, Marcello Systems. Then I got to do support for them instead. I got insight into how insanely complex it is to build large applications and what a monster legacy projects are. Nevertheless, I boldly wanted to fix some bugs. This is like 5–6 years ago so a lot has happened since then. I just fell in love with coding. The balance of solving problems and creating a product, I just love it. My boss was the best guy ever and he had a lot of faith in me. So I became project lead on delivering a web based switchboard solution. I talked them into doing a SPA and today I have no idea how we actually managed to deliver that. The skill level I had when we started was certainly not good enough for the skill level required to finish it. It was all vanilla JavaScript, and still is today! Anyways, we did it and I learned a lot!

What is the most important project you’re currently working on?

I quit my job last year to research technologies and play around with projects. I like to teach, though I often have difficulties explaining stuff. Its all in the head you know. So I wanted to make it easier to teach and learn code. I had a couple of experiments and implemented a project with Angular. The project had potential, but the implementation was crap. Then I got into React and Flux and built my own Flux lib… yeah, I am one of those guys. I rebuilt the project from scratch and really liked the “one way flow” architecture. A few months ago, I created the first version of Cerebral and it hit me… this is a perfect match. So I quit my job, built the project up from scratch again and applied for funding. I got the funding and the prototype will be completed this year. It is really is amazing and I can not wait to show people what I have been working on. I hope to be able to show it off at the conference.

Is there any issue in the web development world that should be fixed asap?

Hm, I am actually very happy with being able to sort my devtool tabs in next version of Chrome… kidding aside… I do not personally have any pressing issues. I still hate IE though. I am so traumatized from the switchoard project I mentioned… IE8 support. I just want the browser vendors to get aligned. There should be like a committee setting requirements for a subset of most important features… with a fair time limit. If browser vendors do not succeed they will get a fine or something. A silly idea maybe, but yeah, that is what I really dislike about working on the web. I actually sent an email to a Norwegian statistics organization. Asked them if they could create statistics on how much money Norwegian companies spent on supporting IE7/8/9. It is an insane amount. Take that in a global perspective, put the money in space exploration and we would be taking vacations on Mars by now. Oh well, it is certainly getting better!

What will you speak about at Reactive 2015?

I am going to talk about Cerebral. Try to convey some mental images on building applications, show some of Cerebral API and hopefully do a demo at the end.

What do you expect from the conference?