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The world of a developer is always changing. As new technology enters the market, there are new concepts to learn and new problems to overcome. With this constant evolution in development, we are grateful there are events like South Dakota Code Camp that continue to focus on learning and growth for engineers in South Dakota.

For those not aware of South Dakota Code Camp, it is a daylong conference run by developers for developers. It is a day of sharing information and lessons learned, all while assisting the developers of the area in expanding their skills.

Omnitech was honored to help sponsor South Dakota Code Camp again this year (November 2016) along with other great organizations helping to foster a strong technology culture in our community. This year brought local presenters, Open Spaces, and a family track. It was incredible to see young kids programming with robots alongside college students and professionals sharing their knowledge and growing their skills.

Omnitech’s very own, Kevin Logan presented "From JavaScript Mess to Cleaner Code in 60 Minutes”. This was Kevin’s second year presenting at Code Camp, and he had this to share about his experience as a presenter this year:

I was fortunate to have a full room of interactive participants for the Cleaner Code in 60 Minutes presentation. Their participation helped me discuss the pros and cons of each approach I took. It was good to share what I have learned over the last ten years of working and seeing jQuery code and comparing it to what is possible in modern web development. My intent was to show that JavaScript code can be readable and maintainable using methodologies that we have adopted in C#, Java, etc. SOLID principles, good naming practices, and Object Orientated can all be used to create JavaScript applications. All of my code can be found at https://github.com/aligneddev/JQueryToAurelia with blog posts at http://www.aligneddev.net/blog, and I plan on adding Jasmine unit test examples, an AngularJS 2.0 implementation, and a ReactJs implementation. I have learned a lot doing the same code in multiple ways. I hope I have another opportunity to give this talk.

Being an active participant in community events like Code Camp is always a privilege and we love sharing the space with a technology community that is as passionate about learning as we are. We are also grateful for engineers like Kevin who never hesitate to mentor and grow the skills of those around him.