DrupalCon Rotterdam

It’s been several years since I last attended a DrupalCon, but last week I went to Rotterdam for an AI dev summit, the conference itself, plus two days in-person with Annertech. A full-on week!

AI: bewildering, informative, personally draining and helpful all at the same time

From From Developer to Code Director:

• Be in the middle, somewhere between complete AI rejection and vibe coding.
• There’s a risk of “intent debt”, we lose knowledge of why things are the way they are.
• We are resposible for our work, so enforce a well-defined context/scope, and stop and validate as often as you need to.
• AI can make a great thinking partner, where you do the work, but get a second opinion.

From Take Back Your Autonomy:

• Speed is easy, control is not.
• We’re accountable for what we ship. How comfortable are we with that?
• If you’re using an agent to code, can you clearly explain to a colleague what you asked for, what you kept, what you rejected? If not, go back.

ECA is something I need to get my head around

I’ve seen a few talks about ECA (a visual automation and orchestration framework for Drupal). I want to study it a bit more, because it (and AI in general) changes the game from “I’ll do X for Y” vs “I’ll facilitate X so that anyone can do Y”.

Single directory components are a big shift for front end Drupal development

From The joy and power of SDC, finally for form inputs

• Drupal theming was very much backend-first (and was miserable). That’s flipped to frontend-first, where whole design systems can be built before anything else.
• Component names (and prop/slot names) are important. Designers - we need you to name these things.
• Not all design system components are compatible with SDCs. Form elements are the worst offenders, but that’s changing.

Canvas is still young

From Advanced Site Building with Drupal Canvas:

• Drupal has long lacked being able nest little things on a big page. Finally that appears to be here, but…
• Lots of things haven’t been battle tested yet: synchronous translation, workspaces.
• It does look - and feel - very different, somehow bolted on top of the rest of Drupal.
• You might not be ready to use it just yet, but you can get ready by embracing SDCs now.

E-bikes are fun

I’ve never used one before, but the hotel was a few kms away from the venue and this is the Netherlands!