Ryan Roemer
CEO & Co-Founder
Ryan Roemer is the CEO and co-founder of Formidable. Technically, he architects full-stack web applications, backend services and APIs, and highly available cloud infrastructures. Ryan leads development groups from small startups all the way up to Fortune 500 engineering teams. He advises clients on issues ranging from technology evaluation and engineering organizational structures to successfully leveraging open source software.
Prior to Formidable, Ryan's work has explored most levels of the modern application stack, including backend services enhancements for Microsoft Azure's Cloud Computing/Storage platform, wrangling large-scale data mining at IP Street, and directing development from scratch on a new language learning product at Curiosity Media.
Outside of engineering, Ryan enjoys trail running, cycling, triathlons, and Type II Fun in general. He is a registered patent attorney (inactive), and although he keeps a close eye on open source legal issues, it has been a long time since he has put on his lawyer hat. Ryan holds degrees from Stanford, UCLA, and UC San Diego.
The awkward valley to ESM: Node.js, Victory, and D3
June 15, 2022
We continue our examination of the shift to ESM on Node.js and broader ramifications for the ecosystem. In this post, we look at the challenges and lessons in handling ESM-only dependencies in our Victory charting library.
Getting Started with (and Surviving) Node.js ESM
November 9, 2021
The Node.js ecosystem is shifting towards ESM. We examine what lies in store for application and library authors, learn some of challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for Node.js developers, and provide tips and tricks for surviving the bumpy transition ride ahead.
trace-pkg: Package Node.js apps for AWS Lambda and beyond
December 15, 2020
Packaging Node.js applications for the cloud can be slow and tedious. We introduce trace-pkg, a general purpose tool to quickly and efficiently package up your application code and dependencies for deployment in AWS Lambda and beyond!Jetpack: blazingly fast Serverless packaging and deploys
May 14, 2019
The Serverless Framework is amazing, but can become incredibly slow to package and deploy applications as projects grow. We introduce the 'serverless-jetpack' plugin, a drop-in replacement for normal Serverless behavior, that offers significantly faster packaging and deployment speed.Locking down AWS Serverless applications, the right way
March 14, 2019
Backend services built with the Serverless Framework on AWS Lambda are enormously popular and powerful, but unfortunately often difficult to secure in the cloud. We present the terraform-aws-serverless project, which provides battle-tested, fine-grained IAM privilege isolation to help lock down your Serverless Framework applications.Finding and fixing duplicates in webpack with Inspectpack
October 31, 2018
Needlessly duplicated dependencies produce larger, slower web applications. Let's embark on a deep dive into how npm and webpack work, see how inefficient duplicates can arise, and learn how the Inspectpack duplicates plugin can help.Introducing Publish-Diff
October 19, 2016
Publishing JavaScript projects to the npm registry is an exercise that, while commonplace, is often opaque to developers and fraught with peril. The opacity comes from projects frequently publishing built files that are omitted from git source and some subtle but important differences...Backbone.js with React Views
November 21, 2014
On Nov. 18, 2014, I presented a talk on “Backbone.js with React Views” at the inaugural Seattle ReactJS Meetup. Backbone.js Backbone.js powers some of the largest web applications on the Internet and we use the framework extensively at Formidable Labs. It provides simple and flexible...Making JavaScript Tests Fast, Easy, & Friendly
August 11, 2014
A few weeks ago, I presented a talk on “Making JavaScript Tests Fast, Easy, & Friendly” at the CascasdiaJS 2014 conference in Portland, OR. The talk looks beyond the traditional technical details of wiring up test frameworks and focuses on creating processes and environments that...