How We Learnt To Stop Worrying And Love The Browser

As we rebuilt twitter.com’s front end architecture we got an opportunity to draw from our combined years of JavaScript triumphs and disasters to develop a brand new front-end infrastructure. The collection of patterns that we’ve made use of are based around simple principles: Don’t fight the browser, don’t fight JavaScript and always use the right tool for the job. Embracing the way that the browser and JavaScript work allow us to write simpler, faster and ultimately less JavaScript. Some techniques will challenge conventional wisdom and we will explore patterns that may be unfamilar to you, but our philosophy remains rooted in a strong understanding of JavaScript and browsers and a belief in always using the best tools for the job.

We’ll be covering several of our key patterns:

• Using a DOM event-driven component architecture to control complexity and ease testing.
• Reuse techniques that play to JavaScript’s strengths rather than trying to impose class-based OO
• Powerful functional techniques and how they can aid code-reuse and modularity.