As a rule of thumb, CodeChem gathers all creative brains who become top-notch engineers nurturing knowledge sharing and mutual growth. We also bring expertise and authenticity by providing, supporting, and giving our best to the community with open-source contributions.

This blog will walk you through how our open-source architects showed the best practices by attending three different Beer.js events throughout the year. With Beer.js Vol.8, we wrapped up 2022, but in addition to listing all three events, we will share some feedback directly from our team and the participants.

If you need to become more familiar with the origin of this event, Beer.js is an informal meetup of JavaScript enthusiasts and development geeks who like to code, talk about web design and problem solving, and occasionally drink beer throughout the event.

All meetups during 2022 happened in Skopje, Macedonia, and the outcome, as usual, was very impressive! We discussed various topics and presented solutions that tick all the right boxes.

Let's start with Beer.js Vol.6, where Lazar Nikolov introduced the audience to building cohesive and accessible UI Machines with Zag.js. You might need clarification when you hear about UI machines, so let's break it down. Have you ever wanted to implement a Slider on your project? During the past years of the web, many people implemented the Slider, and the same logic and bugs occurred repeatedly.

Just like that, Lazar showed us how to implement a Slider component without worrying about the logic behind the Slider, and Zag takes care of that for us. Lazar's "selling point" was to avoid inventing hot water each time we wanted to implement a simple UI component and avoid potential bugs and issues in the future that will save oodles of time.

At the next event, Beer.js Vol 7. Andrej Acevski presented how to make videos using the Remotion library in React. With the Remotion library, you have access to the tools for video creation, but the rules of React stay the same. He applied this and even did an open-source project where you can generate videos based on your playlists in Spotify: https://unwrapit.me/

Andrej's presentation became even more interesting when he asked for help from the audience to create a video from the favorite beers of the people at Beer.js. From the response, we could tell that his speech was very interactive, and everyone enjoyed listening to him.

The first step was introducing the attendants to video making with the Remotion library in React and explaining its benefits. Andrej's solution to share the knowledge was to create a visual example - like we previously mentioned, the subject of the presentation was "The favorite beers of the people at Beer.js." Most of the answers were about one of the famous local beers, Skopsko.

Andrej finished the presentation with a video in an MP4 format, ready for uploading, but behind all that was the magical React code.

Last but not least, the event for 2022 was Beer.js Vol 8, where our colleague Ilija Boshkov gave a speech on how to make "Zero Effort Backends" with the help of a low-code backend development tool called Strapi.

If you need to spin off an MVP quickly, Strapi is our choice here at CodeChem said Ilija to start the presentation. To prove his point, Ilija created a beer rating application called Brewerty. He showed how quickly and easily you can model your backend and focus on your frontend to look more appealing.

The cherry on top was when Ilija presented how to generate a Swagger documentation with all the endpoints in seconds! He said that if you are not the biggest fan of backend development or want a quick project, Strapi is his go-to.

As always, CodeChem's crew did a great job at Beer.js and received positive feedback from the audience. We have much knowledge and experience to share and enjoy finding new and innovative ways to escape stale thinking patterns. We cannot wait to participate in future events, share our knowledge, and contribute to the community.