What Web Development Means

…to me.

The big news today is that beginning Monday, February 3, I will be starting a new position
with GoHealth, a company that sells health insurance to consumers. I’ll be working on both
consumer-facing and intra-company web applications, utilizing Ruby, JavaScript, or whatever
works best for the task at hand.

This comes at the end (or should I say, beginning!) of a process in which I thought more about
web development, and more specifically: what it means to me.

Front end, back end

Recently I had considered myself strictly a back-end developer. That is, I saw our web development
stack as this…

• Browser (HTML, CSS/LESS)
• Server (PHP, XSLT)
• Remote APIs

There was, I felt, a pretty clear delineation of responsibilities there. Browser is front-end. Server is back-end.

As I dug into enterprise web development, the picture started to get a little blurrier.

• Browser (HTML, vanilla JavaScript)
• JavaScript Frameworks (jQuery, Angular.js, Backbone.js, etc.)
• Server-side Frameworks / API consumers (node.js, Django / web.py, Ruby on Rails)
• API Implementors (can be enterprise Java or C# but it really just depends)
• Databases and other data sources

I haven’t worked on anything on the other side of the API wall… which probably meant I wouldn’t
pick be able to take on authentic back-end roles (i.e., server-side business logic). That leaves focusing
on web development over non-web development.

A better web developer

Going into this new phase, I have a couple of goals.

1. Increase my exposure to different web technologies. This is particularly important with reference to transferable skills. I’m very good when it comes to working with the Tessitura API, but to be a full-stack developer, I’m going to have to step into the full spectrum of web technologies.
2. Speak at meetups about these technologies. They could be OpenGov Hack Nights or meetups downtown. But nothing guarantees knowing your technology more than having to publicly speak about it. :-D

Goals for 2014

My new year’s resolution for this year is to have goals.

A stretch, I know. For this blog I prefer to keep things professional,
though if something sneaks in about me wanting to run in a
half-marathon, don’t be surprised.

Learn JavaScript

In other words, be a full-stack developer.

Which can be a bit misleading. Currently I work in PHP/XSLT, which
can arguably be full-stack or back-end, depending on how you look
at things.

And don’t ask me to design anybody’s website.

But. The structure of data on a page. Managing how data is displayed
on a page. Data binding through models. AJAX-y stuff.

That’s more up my alley, and with the amount of frameworks that
are sprouting up daily to address this problem, it’s a good time to
see what types of client-side solutions are being used throughout
the web.

Do Good Things

I have a goal to put in 5 pull requests to some project(s) on GitHub
by the end of the month. I’m not sure if I’m going to make it, but
the broader point applies: the more I work with other people’s code,
the more I learn about codiing as a whole.

Make the Chicago Crash Browser awesome

Chicago Crash Browser

This could be a really handy tool throughout all of Illinois, not just Chicago,
so I’d be very happy to help make this a fast, functional tool for bicycle
and pedestrian advocates like me.

Find a project in Python or Ruby to contribute to

There’s a lot of options at Open Gov Hack Night. Which one sounds interesting to me? Which one can help people the most?

Spend time with the wife and family

Because they’re important too. :-D