[Off Topic] Any "web applicaiton developers" out there?

[Unknown W. Brackets]

>> There are other things on the horizon too.  Big changes in JavaScript, 
>> DOM, HTML, that will make things easier and cleaner.  With that comes 
>> the backwards compatibility... things will be interesting for a while 
>> longer at least ;).
> 
> That's encouraging.

Yeah, I'm pretty interested in it.  It really puts JavaScript back in 
competition with the improvements Flash has gotten over the years (I 
think of it that way because sometimes things are done in Flash because 
JavaScript can't do them.)

Example: Flash can connect a persistent socket to a server, and then 
send and receive chat messages.  This is efficient, fast, and clean. 
Also, someone has to write the server (e.g. in D ;).)

JavaScript has no such thing.  You have to hit the server over and over 
with a request, which is less efficient (even though it will have a keep 
alive connection), takes more bandwidth, and not as immediate.

But, soon, JavaScript will be able to connect using a socket.  This is 
all involved in work the WHATWG is doing, which isn't the W3C but rather 
Mozilla, Safari, and Opera developers iirc.  The W3C has acknowledged 
their work and there's even some hope IE might implement it some day.

That's what keeps the challenge, though.  All the different 
implementations are in different places.  Some people have written 
wonderful JavaScript libraries that bridge the gap - like Dean Edward's IE7.

I don't mean to ramble on, I'm just trying to give you a feel for the 
different things out there.  There really are a lot of aspects to it, 
and I suggest getting a good feel for what you like, and what really 
jives with you and your style.

>> I do a lot of systems type stuff as well.  For example, I help manage 
>> our servers from time to time (because I have some experience doing 
>> that.)  I've written utilities for this in D.

>> Or, if you mean, losing the edge within yourself (not respect or 
>> face), I doubt that's an issue.  Just keep in mind, if you slog off, 
>> you slog off.  It's easy to lose your edge when you switch to 
>> something new, especially something that has an easy learning curve.  
>> This is true with anything, I think.
> 
> You touched on both of my worries: fear of losing respect and fear of 
> losing my edge. It's encouraging to know that you do web application 
> development and still find opportunities to do some systems stuff.
> 
> You also mentioned you do some of your systems stuff in D. How does you 
> employer feel about that? Or are you free to program in what ever 
> language you chose?

I've told my employer that D makes it significantly easier to do systems 
programming quickly (since everything I do involves strings.)  I've also 
taught another person at the office the basics of D.  Many of the 
programmers in our office have a background in another language, e.g. 
Java, C/C++, etc.

Clearly, D is not yet as popular a language as some.  Programming in it 
does mean that there is code I understand better than others, by virtue 
of the language it's written in.  But that is definitely changing, and 
the truth is that D code looks very recognizable to people who know C 
and PHP.

You see, PHP uses a different operator for concatenation, uses foreach, 
and otherwise uses C syntax.  It really wasn't hard to get my coworker 
to understand the differences from C++, and she seemed to agree they 
were all for the better.

Mostly, yes, I'm free to program in whatever language is best.  For a 
quick rundown of how we work (this varies a lot by industry), there's us 
(development house, programmers and project managers), advertising 
agencies, creative/designers, and the end client.

I hardly ever do any from-scratch "design" or similar these days (which 
is good, because my aesthetic talent just doesn't exist.)  That comes 
from the advertising agency (or from a designer we hire.)  We bid on 
jobs, along with other development houses, both for price and 
scope/features.

Usually these engagements last from a few weeks to a few months.  Some 
of them are definitely one-time (websites for movies that will only 
really be used for a month or two before the movie comes out.)  Others 
have continuing phases, maintenance, or otherwise.

So, if I write a mixing program in D (it really was trivial anyway), and 
I leave the company... they'll either find someone who understands it, 
or bid higher for the modifications requested by the client.  More than 
likely, the client will take it if we did the work previously anyway. 
It doesn't really hurt our business much, and the client got it faster 
the first time because I wrote it in D.

But it depends on the employer, of course.  In some cases, it may not be 
possible to use D - in systems or web programming.

-[Unknown]