Introducing Kramer

Hi. I stumbled across this website while searching for answers to a JQuery / Javascript problem (posted elsewhere).

I am a semi-retired former IBM-er who is deep into the launch of an entrepreneurial start-up company. The website is still sitting in my test environment and is not completely debugged, so I will post the web site and details later.

Although I was very technical early in my career (I developed operating systems), as the sales quotas climbed into the millions of dollars, there was little time to deal with the programming aspects of the systems that were being implemented.

To get the business launched quickly, I hired a local web developer to offload some of the development workload. I provided detailed design specs, screen images and transaction flows. After two months of not delivering more than a static index page , I pulled the plug on the project. When I dug into the code, it was clear that he had only a vague idea of how to structure HTML and CSS. He clearly was struggling with JavaScript or the server side code. There was no use of Ajax anywhere on the site. This guy was a 3rd year student at the local university in the computer science program. I just don't understand how it is possible to him to get this far into the program and not know these concepts.

As I have started to meet programmers in this fairly large Midwest U.S. city, I am baffled by how narrow the skill set of the programmers in this community seems to be. It seems like each programmer has just one skill... they might know Java server side coding or .net but nothing else.

I realize that there has been an explosion in the number of technologies out there and it is impossible to know them all, but is this seeming ultraspecialization the case elsewhere? I had a software company for a long time and did a great deal of technical consulting earlier in my career. If a customer wanted something done in another language or on another platform, it was not that big a deal. Since I pulled the plug on the contract web developer, it has taken about 4 weeks to learn HTML, Javascript, php, Ruby, Ajax, JQuery and get about 2/3rds of the site operational. It's been a lot to learn in a short time but it is what it is.


Comments?

What a refreshing intro. I think you will find yourself quite welcome here. I'm curious if you know our Daemonguy from our Moderator Team. He's a fellow IBM-er.

Regarding your comments, I'm one of those who's skill set is somewhat limited, however, I've never actually claimed to be a developer or a designer. I do both on occasion, but primarily it's a hobby. Therefore other things take priority over learning 8 or nine different languages or "skill sets". Now, if this was what I'd choose as my line of work and made my income solely from these skills you can be darned sure I wouldn't be like your 3rd year college student and be limited to just one or two skills.

Hello Kramer,

As a Web designer who began learning HTML and Perl when I was younger, I've just recently started to dig into php, but wanted to ask what Ajax, JQuery, and Ruby are used for? I've heard of Ajax & JQuery, but no further than words. I'm doing a google search now, but felt I'd ask the man who just started to learn these for himself. Feel that you might have a fresh point of view on the topic.

nice picture!!!

Hi orajames.

If you have ever wondered how commercial websites (bank credit card company websites are a good example) could seemingly change on the fly in response to the options that you click on, the magic occurs with becuase they are using dynamic HTML. What is going on in the background is that there is code being executed in the cleint that is dynamically changing the document (DOM) on the fly based on your personal information and how you are intercting with the (dynamic) page content. Manipulating the DOM on the client side is done with Javascript.

However, native HTML and CSS are so simplistic and inflexible, that it is necessary to enhance the functionality on the page with Javascript. So the effects that are now commonplace, like dynamic drop down menus, are quite complex to code from scratch. To address this frameworks like jQuery and Yahoo's YUI have been created to make it easier to create standard effects. These, in turn, are extended by what are called plug-in libraries for these frameworks.

All of this flexibility makes it necessary to interact very dynamically with the server where all of the user's data is stored. Ajax is the name of the technique that is used to manage the on-demand interaction between the Javascript functions attached to the DOM and the server side code that processes the data.

On the server side there are dozens(?) of languages to handle the dynamic data exchange. The ones that I have gained some experience with so far are php, Ruby, Grails, Java Server Pages, and others I haven't looked at. Perl is a server side language.

Wikipedia is a good place to get started on figuring out how this works. I have been astonished at how much has changes and how fast all of this stuff is evolving.

If you want to take a peek under the covers and see what is going on download firebug and httpwatch and plug them into firefox. You will be amazed at how much goes on in those records between the time that you click on a button and the screen repaints.

Good luck!

Modernized: Trinity to Tank


I sort of like this alternate version.




"Dodge this!"
http://jonudell.net/udell/2003-08-07-ta ... opter.html

That's exactly how I felt when I lost my PC in 2005 to a crash, then went almost 2 years without one. When I got back into the swing of things in 07' with my new PC I was blown away by the changes web designing took. It was a large gap from what I was use to. Now it's all experimenting, seeing what I can get a hang of, and what is available for me.

Looks like Joebert has cleverly address the learning curve problem associated with the accelerating rate of technological change.

Replicate yourself like Agent Smith and just like women taking too much time to make babies... Problem Solved!!!

It's actually a little simpler that that, and I suppose Nike said it best. "Just do it!".