This article is a continuation of the previous part about the most well-known and significant personalities in the world of front-end. This time I considered several names, which are known among the JS lovers.
John Resig
(Image credits: Rannie Turingan)
Personal web site: ejohn.org
At the age of 27 John already had time to leave one’s mark in the history of web. First of all he is known, as a creator of jQuery – the most popular js- library in the world (last rating according to W3Tech). His love to JS can be seen in all his biography. Within four years he worked in Mozilla Corporation, first in position of JavaScript evangelist, and after – as JavaScript Tool Developer. Exactly a year ago he leaved Mozilla, to join Khan Academy, where he became a leader of their Open Source activity and JS developments.
Except his basic work, Resig took part in development of various useful things, among which are FUEL (project for Firefox Plugin development), Processing.js (language for creation of visual effects), Sizzle (engine for CSS selectors), and also EnvJS and TestSwarm. Moreover, he wrote two books on JS – “Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja“(2011) and “Pro JavaScript Techniques“(2006). And also, John likes playing Starcraft 2(id: frowny.396, Silver Protoss)
Nicholas C. Zakas
(Image credits: Scott Schiller)
Personal web site: www.nczonline.net
Nicholas began his career as web master in a little software company, then he started working on UI design and prototyping, until 2006, when he moved to the Silicon Valley and joined Yahoo! In Yahoo! he has been working for five years and became a front-end tech leader of the main page yahoo.com. Directly participated in the development of Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) library, and also created Cookie Utility, Profiler and YUI Test. Now he is the proprietor of “Nicholas C. Zakas Consulting” – conducts lectures, trainings, speaks with reports etc.
As well as other web developers of such level, Zakas tries to carry his knowledge to the world with all accessible methods. In particular, he is an author of such books as Professional JavaScript for Web Developers and High Performance JavaScript, a co-author of Professional Ajax, in addition he writes articles on different resources – beginning from Sitepoint and ending with A List Apart. His most interesting articles are neatly kept in the special section of his web site. As for the live performances, he is often being invited as a speaker in the most different companies – from LinkedIn, Google and Netflix to NASA.
Nate Koechley
(Image credits: Drew McLellan)
Personal web site: nate.koechley.com
Nate is one of the first web developers in Yahoo!, working there from a 2001. If to take a look at his LinkedIn profile, it is possible to see his growth as a high quality professional in this area. It is also interesting to follow how were changing his positions in Yahoo! – Web Developer, Manager Web Development, Design Group, Senior Web Developer, Platform Design Team, User Experience and Design Group at Yahoo!, Senior Frontend Engineer, YUI Team, and, finally, his current position – Director, Design Architecture & Prototyping at Yahoo! As for his current activity, it concerns the development of open – source Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library. And when Nate does not work on YUI, he writes on YUIBlog and on his personal blog, propagandizes web-standards and makes reports all over the world – from lectures in National Taiwan University to trainings on Microsoft (MIX) and Adobe (MAX).
At the same time he remains an independent consultant. In particular, he was invited as a consultant to New York Times Digital, Netflix, PayPal, eBay, TiVo, Walmart, Oracle, Adobe and Microsoft. And of course his books – Nate took part in writing of “High Performance Web Sites“(O’Reilly, 2008), “Modular Web Design“(2009) and “Developing Large Web Applications“(O’Reilly, 2010). And the last interesting fact – in 2009 he got the first patent that is related to the new method of scaling web pages’ text.
Remy Sharp
(Image credits: Stefan Nitzsche)
Personal web site: remysharp.com
I learned about Remy Sharp, when I opened for myself a jQuery for Designers web site. In the About section I read his phrase: “I’ve worked with a few designers, and my reason for using jQuery is because I’m lazy. It’s easy to write and easy to read. It kills a lot of the tedious aspects of coding and makes things funs”. It was approximately the same, what I felt at that moment, therefore I took to him at once.
In 2009 he became a coordinator of Full Frontal – a conference on JavaScript, which was held in UK and became annual. A book “Introducing HTML5” was released in 2010, in which he was presented as the co-author of Bruce Lawson. Besides, he is one of the authors and editors of HTML5Doctor resource, a developer of JS Bin, HTML5 Demos and Snap Bird (JS- utility for searching on Twitter), is the member of jQuery team. And of course, he is a web-evangelist, loving JavaScript :)
To speak about his work place, it is possible to mention that he was not noticed as an employee of some large company, and rather vice versa – from a 2006 he manages his own company Left Logic, that works on web-development and trainings.
Jeremy Keith
(Image credits: David Thompson)
Personal web site: adactio.com
The name of this Irishman is probably known to you due to his books. At this moment Jeremy has got three books: HTML5 for Web Designers, DOM Scripting and Bulletproof Ajax. Now he works in Clearleft, and also is an administrator on microformats.org. Besides, for last three years Jeffrey is developing his brainchild – a huffduffer.com project (a service that facilitates the work with podcasts).
Alex Russell
(Image credits: Dustin Diaz)
Personal web site: infrequently.org
If you dealt with the Dojo library, then probably you are acquainted with Alex Russell, he was one of its creators in 2004. Now he works in Google. Being a software engineer he is working on Chrome Frame and open-source web platform. Also, he helped Google to standardize ECMAScript. Before Google he held a position of R&D Director in the SitePen startup, and also did the saturated user interfaces for JotSpot and Informatica, where he began to help developing Dojo. Moreover, Alex is an excellent speaker and you can see it for yourself by watching the videos with Google I/O : HTML5 & What’s Next, Learning to Love JavaScript and HTML5 Today with Google Chrome Frame.
The next representative from the world of front-end will be standing out a bit from those, whom I specified before. I simply forgot to add him to the previous list. Therefore I hope that no one will be against, if I will tell a bit about him in this part.
Douglas Crockford
(Image credits: Allen Rabinovich)
Personal web site: crockford.com
It is quite difficult to give complete information about this “Chuck Norris” in the world of JS in a few sentences. Douglas works in Yahoo!, where he is a main architect on JavaScript and heads the developments related to JS, in particular – YUI. In addition, he is a creator and popularize of JSON format, and also such useful things, as JSlint and JSmin. Whole pack of articles, reports, videos and other content related to JS is possible to find in the corresponding section of his web site.
Plus, he is the author of popular book JavaScript: The Good Parts. But it is the information that probably, many of you already know. However, not all know that for some time Crockford worked on computerization of Atari, Lucasfilm, and Paramount. When Lucasfilm Games worked on Maniac Mansion, the first game for NES, Douglas volunteered to work on it. This history has a whole section on Wikipedia. Crockford has his own story dedicated to this episode of his biography.