Category Archives: Development

My Impressions of Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

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Recently I’ve been asked several times for my opinion on the Google Web Toolkit (GWT)  and I’ve given much the same response each time. Now, it’s easier to consolidate my thoughts and share them with everyone via my blog.  I want to preface this post by stating, as I always do, that I have not taken a “deep-dive” look at GWT and, due to my stance below, I haven’t seen a reason to do such research.  I also want to state up-front that I don’t believe there’s any inherent flaw in GWT that prevents me from using it; nor do I think it’s “bad technology.” Finally, I’ve done my best to not allow my general distaste for Java influence my opinion of GWT.

I do not believe that GWT offers a unique value proposition as a platform that establishes any advantage over other Web development platforms such as traditional HTML and CSS or Adobe Flex. Additionally, there are some clear areas in which GWT lags behind these counterparts. Continue reading →

How Self-Executing Anonymous Functions Work

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In my recent post on creating a jQueryUI widget, I referenced the concept of self-executing anonymous functions. I’ve actually had a few questions come up at the office lately about how they work, so I figured turning it into a blog post might not be a bad idea. It’s an important concept in Javascript many don’t know about. Others know how to use them, but don’t really understand how or why they work. Today I’ll cover step-by-step how to go from a traditional function to a self-executing anonymous function; hopefully it will be clear at the end how these things work.
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Create a Basic jQueryUI Carousel Widget

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One of the topics that was of great interest at #jqcon was jQueryUI and it’s impressive widget library.  What didn’t receive as much attention was how exactly to go about creating widgets that are compatible with jQueryUI.  In this first of a series of articles in jQueryUI development, we’ll cover the basics of creating a simple jQueryUI widget.  In future articles, we’ll look at how to pair widgets together using the Publisher / Subscriber (pub/sub) pattern.

This carousel is probably not quite robust enough to be deployed to production and I urge you to avoid copying and pasting this code into your live site. This basic carousel aims to teach you how to build one yourself as well as how to build a jQueryUI widget.

Create the Basic HTML Markup

To begin, we need a basic page and some photos thumbnails to work with. The thumbnails, as you’ll see later, can be any size you choose and our carousel will expand to fit them. Note especially that we’re only including some basic shell markup.  There are a few good reasons for this decision: First, it keeps our basic document clean and free of extraneous markup. Second, it is far less work for people implementing our widget—and fewer potential points of error in their process.

<div id="slide">
    <div>
         <img src="img/carousel/0_10.jpg" width="78" height="29" alt="" />
    </div>
    <div>
         <img src="img/carousel/0_11.jpg" width="78" height="58" alt="" />
    </div>
    <div>
         <img src="img/carousel/1_6.jpg" width="78" height="58" alt="" />
    </div>
    <div>
         <img src="img/carousel/1_4.jpg" width="78" height="58" alt="" />
    </div>
    <div>
         <img src="img/carousel/0_9.jpg" width="78" height="58" alt="" />
    </div>
</div>

For demonstration purposes, I’ve chosen the Cupertino theme available for download from the jQueryUI ThemeRoller application. You can choose any theme you desire—or create your own. Also, you can see I’ve created a reference to a  carousel.js file. We’ll create this file as we continue.

Create the basic framework of a jQueryUI plugin

Now that we have our basic structure in place for the carousel, we can begin to create the javascript that will control the animation and interaction. jQueryUI provides a great construct called $.widget() that will encapsulate all of the functionality of the widget within a single namespace and construct. Let’s start by creating a basic widget:

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Quick Javascript Tip: Pass an Options Hash

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A quick Javascript tip that I pass along in a lot of code reviews is to make use of an options object as a hash to pass a large number of parameters to a function without writing each one individually.  For example:

function doSomething(id, someParameter, anArgument, optionC){ };

vs.

function doSomething(id, options){ };

By encapsulating the 3 additional parameters into an options object and passing them individually, you make for cleaner code.

A quick caveat is to check the options object to ensure that all of the necessary properties exist before running your function.  

Hiring Top Talent: It’s the Process

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In August 2008, I was tasked with beefing up our User Interface Engineering staff for the AutoTrader Classics project.  Up until that point, managers had always been in charge of hiring new engineering staff; however, our director agreed with a suggestion that several of us made that engineers were more qualified to hire new engineers than managers.  This belief is not an indictment of our talented management team–it’s only a statement that people in general are not qualified to hire for a job they don’t truly understand.  So, I set about not only to hire the engineers we needed; but also to redefine our process for recruiting new talent.

37Signals suggests today that the resume is less important than the cover letter.  While I agree with their points, many companies use staffing vendors and don’t generally receive any cover letters.  In the absence of such a letter, we’re left with only the resume for a first impression.  These are reviewed by one of a team of Senior Engineers who focus primarily on your work experience.  Giant lists of skills with years of experience will tell the hiring company nothing that work experience will not.

Recommendation 1: Staffing vendors will want you to add a “laundry list” of skills to your resume.  Recognize that this list is for the vendor’s benefit–not the hiring manager at any company.

Years of experience are downplayed; what we really look for is: “Does this candidate’s resume read similarly to how our own resume looks.”  This fact is a great advantage of having engineers hiring engineers–we know what it takes to be successful in our roles and can spot it far easier than someone outside the role.

From there, it’s on to the phone screen. As they say, “time is money,” and conducting several phone screens is far less time consuming than conducting tons of face-to-face interviews.  In our case, this screen is typically a 10-20 minute phone call where very directed technical questions are asked.  Most of them are fairly basic, but they serve two very important purposes:

  1. Resume Validation We want to see that you can actually answer questions that your resume suggests you should be able to answer easily. It is truly amazing how many people “pad” their resume so much that they quite honestly don’t know what’s on it.
  2. Gap Fill Your resume isn’t going to hit on every point we’re looking for in a candidate; we’re going to use this chance to “fill in the gaps” and see if you bring more to the table.

Recommendation 2: Request a copy of the resume a staffing vendor sends to a prospective employer.  Often vendors will pad your resume themselves in hopes of making you appear more marketable.  Do not work with any vendor who insists on this practice.  You must be prepared to answer questions related to what’s on your resume so you need to know exactly what’s there.

Past the phone screen, it’s time to move to the face-to-face interview (though this could be conducted via a web conference, it is easier, and in my opinion better, to do it in person).  We choose the panel interview as our format, 3-5 Senior Engineers (depending on the level of the positon we’re hiring for) will ask questions, provide coding questions, and you’ll be asked to do at least one fairly simple free-form coding exercise.  Again, there are reasons for this format:

  1. Panel Pressure Sitting up in front of a panel of Senior Engineer interviewers is daunting to say the least.  We strongly believe that grace-under-pressure is a characteristic of truly great people, and the panel is a truly organic way to see it in action.
  2. To do the job, you have to do the job I hear a lot of people saying, “I don’t like coding tests in interviews.” I’ve said it myself.  What I don’t like are coding tests that are more like code reviews than exams.  We provide coding questions to see whether or not you really can jump in an work in our world.  If you can’t debug some simple Javascript on command, you’re likely not ready for this position.

This “grilling” typically lasts from 30-45 minutes.  The truth is, after even 15-20 minutes, we’re already starting to form an opinion.  Nothing we require in an interview is truly difficult (at least, it shouldn’t be for even a moderately competent engineer), and we see a lot of candidates either shine at it or fail miserably.

Recommendation 3: You may find yourself “on the bubble,” you didn’t breeze your way through the technical part of the interview–but you did quite well.  Personality is key!  A person on the bubble who we like will be more likely to get hired than a drone who knocked out the technical questions but bored us all to death. Never underestimate what your personality can buy you!

Those who succeed in our screening process join us as contractors for 3-6 months.  And that time period is the real interview.

Recommendation 4: Ultimately, represent yourself honestly. If you don’t and you manage to sneak through a process, you will be discovered and you will be out of a job without even a quality reference to show for it.  It’s better to get a job that you’re qualified for and can love then to find yourself overwhelmed.