Developer Max Bucknell talks Magento 2 and the future.

we sat our developer, Max Bucknell, down for a chat. We asked the full stack dev to tell us what to expect during his talk as well as his thoughts on future trends in the Magento world and development.

Tell me about your talk at Meet Magento Poland? What should people expect?

Our talk is essentially a nose-to-tail discussion of everything that has changed for JavaScript development in Magento 2 and what we need to be thinking about. Whether it’s asynchronous loading, to improved performance; or improving security or making the code more modular or separating concerns. Also, how to use the check-out JavaScript rather than fight with it to make effective customisations.

It’s mainly content filled and we’re going to go through it pretty fast. A lot has changed in Magento 2 and there’s a lot to learn. In short, the general theme of the talk is: there is more JavaScript, which is following the pattern of the web industry.

One of the things we noticed when we started developing Magento 2, particularly implementation in-house, was that the learning curve on the front-end, particularly the amount of complexity of the JavaScript implementation is significant. That’s not without reason; it sometimes seems like it is without reason but it’s not. There is thought behind everything that Magento does.

People don't yet understand Magento 2 that well. A perfect example of that is in a recent twitter poll I did where I asked "How well do you know Magento 2's new JavaScript?", and a lot of people showed that they really didn't understand it that well. So we're hoping to clear some of that doubt.

https://twitter.com/maxbucknell/status/771389512870133761

https://twitter.com/maxbucknell/status/771389335467950080

What do you see being the trends in Magento for 2017 and beyond?

I think Magento 2 is just starting to ramp up in the market now. We’re starting to see more adoption, more third party modules. It’s become clear to me that the biggest feature of Magento 2 is its API. To me, it’s the biggest and most important change in the platform because now we can integrate more easily. For example, we can build a store front-end that doesn’t necessarily go through Magento, it’s just an app. You can build an IOS,  Android app or you can build POS integration. And once you’ve got that kind of flexibility, you’re really looking at taking ecommerce everywhere and the reach of Magento just becomes far larger.

In terms of what developers are going to see, I think that we’re going to see more diversification in terms of what we do beyond the bread and butter Magento store with a Magento front-end where we write PHP and JavaScript to seeing more and more different deployments of a front-end but with the same core of Magento’s architecture in the middle bit, being the brain running all of this stuff. And whether that’s Magento 2 itself or just Magento 2 order management system (OMS), however it’s deployed it’s ultimately decentralised. By that I mean you’ve got an API brain and then maybe a react front-end and maybe an Android app and a till system. And all of those are going to have different structures and it’s ultimately going to require us to know more and do more different things

What skills should developers be looking to build on?

I’ve always been a big believer in that technology changes quickly and understanding the core foundations of what you’re using is fundamental, that’s why they are called fundamentals. JavaScript changes, we get new languages that a part of JavaScript or Magento changes, but if you know the basics really well, if you are good with your PHP you can still customise Magento. I think biggest thing over the next few years is that ecommerce is going to change a lot.

The main things I would advise developers is to be curious, nail down the fundamental skills and if possible really improve your fundamental JavaScript knowledge; how dynamic binding works, how prototype based inheritance works, what a close is etc. Because I think those things over the next few years are going to become really important in the Magento world.

If you're attending Meet Magento Poland, don't miss Max and Marcin's talk on Monday 19th September at 3pm. You can follow all the action from the event by follow #MM16PL or @MeetMagentoPL and by following us @redboxdigital.