055 JSJ Web Developer Skills

Use this link and code JAVAJAB to get 20% off your registration for FluentConf 2013! Panel AJ O’Neal (twitter github blog) Merrick Christensen (twitter github) Joe Eames (twitter github blog) Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Discussion 00:57 - What does it mean to be a “web developer” “T-shaped skills” 11:01 - Minumum level entry skills you need to become a web developer HTML CSS JSHint Jade less.js jquery 19:39 - CSS Jade 24:24 - Mid-Senior level skills you need to become a web developer Networking HTTP Wireshark Build systems node.js NoSQL Netcat MVC frameworks Preprocessers REST Picks Prime Workers (AJ) Adobe Illustrator (AJ) Vagrant (Merrick) Puppet (Merrick) Mountain West Ruby Conference (Jamison) TXJS (Jamison) Breeze.js (Joe) edge.js (Joe) 'Arrested Development' Comes Back On Netflix On May 26, So Get Extra Sleep Now: Linda Holmes (Joe) Intro to Networking with Netcat and NodeJS (AJ) Intro to HTTP with Netcat, Node, Connect (AJ) Next Week Marionette.js with Derick Bailey Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at Bluebox.net.] [This episode is sponsored by Component One, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to Wijmo.com and check them out.] JAMISON:  Hey guys and welcome to JavaScript Jabber. I’m your guest host today, Jamison Dance. Chuck is at Mount West Ruby Conference today and we have a bunch of panelists today. The first one is AJ O’Neal. AJ:  Yo! Yo! Yo! Coming at you as live as I can from Provo, Utah. JAMISON:  We’ve got Merrick Christensen. MERRICK:  What’s up? JAMISON:  And we’ve got Joe Eames. JOE:  Hey, how’s it going? JAMISON:  Today, we’re talking about just general web development skill sets, like what do you need to know to be a web developer? We should probably start off and define what a web developer is first because I think that it’s a really overloaded term. What do you guys think it means to be a ‘web developer’? I’m doing air quotes right now. JOE:  Merrick and I have had some conversations about this and it’s like I feel like his opinion of what a web developer is, is slightly different than mine. And maybe I’m coming more in line with what his definition is. So, I want to hear his first. MERRICK:  My definition? JOE:  Yeah, go. MERRICK:  So, one of the things that I see a lot of people saying as a web developer is people who come from traditional software engineering backgrounds and they come thinking that they can avoid HTML and CSS altogether. I think that’s a really dangerous approach because then you end up moving too much into JavaScript. And then, you have the opposite problem where people just don’t understand programming well and they end up with sort of jQuery spaghetti code. Which I think is okay for a lot of the brochure style sites, a lot of the maybe WordPress or content driven sites you can get by with just being really solid at HTML/CSS and then below average with JavaScript. But I think if you want to be a web application developer, you’re going to have to be solid on all three of those technologies, CSS, HTML, JavaScript and depending on the app that may include CSS preprocessors et cetera. JOE:  You said web application developer, right? MERRICK:  Yeah. I think there’s a difference. JOE:  Yeah, okay. For mine, one of the things that I feel like is I’m weak with CSS, right? And so, I kind of have this disdain about people that are like, “Oh, you don’t know CSS, huh? Well, that’s a problem.” And I want to say, “Well, yeah I’m not great with CSS.” I can tread water. But I can’t take a screen shot that some designer puts together in Illustrator and then turn it into a web page and feel like I’m doing it right. I always want to turn to an expert and say, “Hey, what do you think of this layout?