Scandlebars (a Scala implementation of Handlebars) at Gilt

Gilt Lead Engineer Mark Wunsch will talk about Scandlebars, a Scala implementation of the Handlebars tempting language. As always, there will be pizza, beer, and an awesome talk!

Here's Mark's overview of the talk:

At Gilt (gilt.com), we built a Scala implementation of the Handlebars templating language (originally written in JavaScript) to use as our go-to language for building reusable web views. This talk will cover why we would ever attempt such a thing and how we went about doing it.

Handlebars (http://handlebarsjs.com/) is a "logicless" templating language. Fed up with bloated JSP's, we wanted to experiment with rendering more of Gilt's customer-facing web experience client-side. Handlebars.js was the perfect fit for the browser but we thought, "how can we leverage this on the server-side?" What follows is the tale of how an intrepid Front End Engineer versed in JavaScript and Ruby began his journey into Scala. This talk will discuss Scala Parser Combinators and the challenges of bridging programming language paradigms. What began as an experimental toy is now responsible for rendering some of the most crucial elements of the Gilt.com user experience -- and it's open source.