It’s easy to pick a front-end framework because it’s popular and well supported, but is it really the best choice for your particular set of challenges? Picking a tool before defining the job it’s needed for can lead to significant development delays and business risks. These can be avoided by clearly defining not just what your end goal is, but also what resources you have available, internally and externally.
This talk will explore how CarGurus held a bake off to decide which framework would best support the needs of our front-end development teams and evolving application ecosystem. We’ll also look at the real-world results of this decision, including its effects on developer experience, SEO, and Core Web Vitals.
Interview:
What's the focus of your work these days?
Updating and modernizing mission-critical foundation services that our entire application ecosystem relies on.
What technical aspects of your role are most important?
Problem solving, the ability to think abstractly, and understanding complex systems. The team I'm on needs to be able to predict and prepare, to the best of our ability, for the downstream effects of changes we make. Likewise, open stakeholder communication is key when things don't go as planned...
How does your InfoQ Dev Summit Boston session address current challenges or trends in the industry?
The front-end ecosystem can feel like the Wild West at times. Packages and tools are evolving rapidly and it can often be tempting to go with the framework du jour, which in fact may not be the best solution for a particular problem.
How do you see the concepts discussed in your InfoQ Dev Summit Boston session shaping the future of the industry?
Our assessment of the available front-end frameworks took the Lean Startup approach to quickly iterating on several different concurrent approaches to find the one that best fit the needs of our stakeholders. The startup mentality can be highly valuable even when working in mid- to large-scale companies.
Speaker
Alex Shopov
Principal Software Engineer @CarGurus, 20+ Years of Software Development Experience
Alex Shopov is a full-stack Principal Software Engineer on the Developer Experience team at CarGurus. He has been writing code almost since he could read, and has worked across the technology gamut from low-level assembly to cloud-based micro services. He is a co-recipient of the 2006 Innovative Technical Achievement Sports Emmy for his work developing on-air graphics for CBS Sports, and moonlights as a teaching assistant for several foundational Computer Science classes at the Harvard Extension School.
As an athletic nerd, Alex enjoys spending his free time coding, playing video games, running, and competing in powerlifting.
