The JavaScript Developer is a series of interviews with JS developers where they share their stories, inspirations and life lessons. This is the fifth and the concluding part of the series.
Cathy Lill is a front end developer and JavaScript specialist, currently working at NICTA on an open source WebRTC framework called rtc.io. Prior to joining NICTA, she worked on the Canvas template builder at Campaign Monitor.
Over the years, she has taught JavaScript, HTML and CSS development with community organizations like Girl Develop It and has given talks at SydJS, Web Directions Respond, Sydney Web Apps Group and Girl Geek Dinners. She is passionate about encouraging and mentoring aspiring developers to create cool stuff on the web.
Here are the excerpts from the interview:
Table of Contents
I live in Sydney, Australia. We are really lucky here to have such a great community around tech and web development. Our local JavaScript meetup SydJS just had its 4th birthday and it’s always been a fantastic and welcoming place to talk and hang out with other developers. I did a talk of my own a few months ago – a demo of a guitar effects unit built with the HTML5 Audio API. I have also done talks for the local Girl Geek Dinners meetup, helped out at SydCSS meetup and taught some classes with Girl Develop It and General Assembly. Local meetups are a great way to keep in touch with what’s going on locally and in the wider world of tech, they are also a great place to hone your public speaking skills.
I just recently finished working on the newly launched Canvas email template builder for Campaign Monitor. I’m currently working at NICTA on an open source WebRTC framework called rtc.io. It is a collection of JavaScript charts modules to help developers build apps for peer to peer video, audio and data communication.
I don’t think it was so much programming that I chose, but building the World Wide Web. When I started out, the idea that anyone could create a web page and publish it instantly to the whole world represented a huge shift in how people could communicate and share information. All you need is a computer, a text editor and an internet connection, and you can build practically anything!
The first proper website I made was for the rock band I was in at University. We spent all day taking this cool panorama shot of the band for it, which our drummer stitched together manually in Photoshop. This was maybe 1999 – there was no such thing as photo stitching software back then and it took forever to get the photos right!
Don’t be afraid to dive into the W3C and ECMA specs, everything you need to know is there. Tutorials are not always accurate or up to date so it’s a good habit to refer the specs regularly. Mozilla Developer Network is also an invaluable resource that I use almost every day.
JavaScript is the key to doing all the coolest stuff with the web and building the web is a great career. You get to be creative, solve challenging technical puzzles and work with lovely people.
I can’t think of one big criticism but I do think it’s important to be open to day to day criticisms and alternative ideas. Web developers are usually passionate about what they do and opinionated about how they do it, but putting effort into working collaboratively produces better quality software and is ultimately so much more rewarding.
My product manager at a previous company, once said “You changed the way we do things here for the better.” Having worked at some big companies where you sometimes feel like a small cog in a big machine, it was really cool to have made a positive impact not just on the technical process but the quality of the product.
Mountain biking and Netflix, not necessarily in that order.
That’s me 🙂 !
I’m still amazed by the GPS and mapping capabilities we carry around in our smartphones. It’s so commonplace now it’s barely worth mentioning, still, I’d be lost (literally!) without them.
I try not to obsess over tech gadgets too much. My Doc Martens are the only things I couldn’t do without – a new pair takes forever to wear in!
Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell. She’s a bad-ass lady cyborg cop and a smart, strong leader. Her character also deals with questions about human consciousness in a thoughtful and interesting way.
Guitar Hero – caters to both my love of 90’s rock music and my short attention span!
My biggest motivation is to build something that is useful. Whether it’s creating a fun experience, providing news and information, or facilitating communication, if it’s useful to someone then it’s worthwhile to build it and build it well.
Development for the web is always changing. You need to be impatient enough to want to always be learning and updating your skills, but at the same time patient enough to sweat the small details to create a seamless user experience. Empathy for your users is really important.
My current project is my dream project – WebRTC and NodeJS!
Be open to learning new things but don’t be overwhelmed by the huge array of frameworks and technologies. Concentrate on projects and technologies that interest you the most, or that you think are the most useful.
This is the concluding part of the series. If you liked reading this, you may also want to check out:
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