Our Inreviewees:
Noah Hendrix
Paul Bakaus
Keith Wood
1. Hi! Would each of you please introduce yourself shortly?
Paul Bakaus: Sure thing! I'm Paul Bakaus, web developer and new CTO of german-based startup Dextrose AG, where we are currently working on a browser based game engine built with jQuery. Most people in the web community might know me for being the creator of jQuery UI though, which is the official UI framework to be used with jQuery Core, and I'm thus part of the jQuery team. I also published many crazy experiments over the year at my blog and in the jQuery UI labs, where I have been taking the lead since a couple months ago.
Noah Hendrix: I'm a Computer Science student at the University of Kansas. I am interested in web development in PHP/MySQL and Ruby on Rails. I obsessively follow web startups and have been known to have my own entrepreneurial ambitions. My development environment of choice is Mac OSX using a combination of TextMate and Coda. I am a part of the Web Services department at KU where we work on various department websites. I also do freelancing for local businesses with web needs. If you want to keep updated with what I am doing the best place is to follow me on Twitter.
Keith Wood: I'm Keith Wood, a Web developer living in Brisbane, Australia. Mostly I work in Java, but often have to venture into the browser to complete the application. I have contributed to the jQuery UI project and have made
numerous jQuery plugins available.
2. How much time could it take for beginning developer to learn jQuery?
Paul Bakaus: Very little. Of course, this is a very generalized answer, so let's go a bit into detail. For a beginning developer, learning jQuery is highly effective, and the learning curve is great. The API of jQuery is very semantic and easily understandable for non-programmers, and high level programming concepts such as classical inheritance can be ignored.
However, it might be worth to mention that it often is the other way around for actual developers, for instance ones that come from the server-side. I realized over years that it can be very hard to relearn simplicity when you have been programming with a language like Java before. Like Picasso once said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child”. This is also very true for jQuery.
Noah Hendrix: If they are new to programming in general I also recommend a solid knowledge of Javascript before they attempt jQuery, you have to know the insides before you can appreciate a framework. Having said that I know plenty of people that have little to know experience with Javascript, but are flying with jQuery. I think it is great for front-end designers who may a domain of expertise more centered in the design world, but need the ability to have their designs do more advanced things.
Keith Wood: Anyone with a basic knowledge of HTML and its DOM, CSS, and JavaScript can pick up jQuery in a day. That's sufficient to perform simple tasks like showing and hiding sections, attaching events, changing styles or values, and adding new content. Using AJAX is a little more complex but can be achieved in a couple of days. But there's a lot to jQuery and it takes longer to discover all of its functionality and how to make the best use of it. I'm still learning things even now.
3. Does jQuery helps to build better web communication?
Paul Bakaus: I don't think jQuery can do much to improve that relationship. On the other hand, jQuery can greatly help web developers to improve the interaction between their clients and their website. Since it comes with a lot of animation magic, it's trivial to build great interaction patterns like drag & drop to visualize what's going on for the user.
Noah Hendrix: n a way jQuery is great for centralizing an otherwise wild world of JS. It used to be every website had their own style of writing code and if you want to combine techniques you'd usually end up with a spaghetti mess of styles. jQuery really brings together an intelligent design idiom of chaining methods and focusing on the elements in the DOM, something plain JS has trouble with.
Keith Wood: Yes, on two fronts. It makes using AJAX simple allowing us to build dynamic pages for a better user experience. It also enables us to build stylish Web pages and applications that are rich in features and engage more with the user.
4. Can any other similar tool compete with jQuery nowadays?
Paul Bakaus: There's a lot of competition out there, and competition is great. It keeps us running fast and faster, a performance improvement on selector engines, for example, is almost like a never-ending game for competing library developers :) To answer the question, it really depends on what you're planning to achieve, and what audience you're targeting. For designers, jQuery might be a very good candidate to get started and develop websites quickly. If you're building a full blown web application and have a couple of developers in your team, you might want to go with a framework such as YUI or Dojo.
Noah Hendrix: Honestly I really don't like reverting back to prototype when I have to, it feels less polished and more cumbersome then to do the same thing in jQuery. I do not have experience with others, such as MooTools, but I hear great things about them. The more people writing JS the better for the community as a whole, so more power to them.
Keith Wood: I haven't used any of the other JavaScript frameworks. I found jQuery first when I was looking for a JavaScript library and found it very easy to use and powerful. I haven't felt the need to investigate anything else.
5. What future do you predict for jQuery?
Paul Bakaus: A great one! Already now, we have by far the greatest market share when it comes down to libraries and web frameworks, and we're doing our best this year to extend this success story for jQuery UI, which gets a lot more attention internally and externally this year. We're also serving a lot more "meta" goodies around jQuery nowadays, having four conferences this year, updated project sites and a lot more.
If you're interested in a broader overview of the future, I highly suggest to visit us at our Bay conference end of April! Checkout jQuery Events for more details :)
Noah Hendrix: I think jQuery is in a good place now with the recent (not so recent anymore) release of 1.4.2 you can see they are adding new features and intelligently restructuring the design to allow for a solid core to move forward. One thing I like to watch is jQuery UI, I don't think a lot of people know about it and use it to the full extent. That is where the real meat of jQuery for design lies and for it I see a bright future.
Keith Wood: A rosy one. There are many talented people contributing to the project and it has the backing of some major companies (notably Microsoft). Because of the library's built-in extensibility it is easy to add functionality that doesn't currently exist. There is a very active third-party plugin community providing many high quality add-ons to make the Web developer's life that much easier (or flashier).
6. Please describe jQuery using any three or five words only (e.g. simple, convenient, etc… ).
Keith Wood: Powerful, intuitive, elegant.
Noah Hendrix: compact, ubiquitous, advanced, fast, concise
Paul Bakaus: small, efficient, easy, rock-solid
Arthur Johnsonarcher@designinterviews.com
Get in touch with Arthur: archer@designinterviews.com
