David Walsh
Who’s David?
I’m a 26-year old Web Developer from Madison, Wisconsin, United States. I’m author a web development blog, David Walsh Blog, and am a member of the MooTools Core Development team.
Do you have a Brand?
I don’t know if I have a brand, per say. I’ve found that my blog’s illustration has been very recognizable outside of the site itself.
How do you choose the idea and the colors in any new project?
I try to follow the color scheme of the client’s logo. If the logo’s colors don’t lend themselves well to web, I usually stick to safe, light colors.
What does your typical day look like?
I spend 8-5 at my full time job, mostly typing emails and coordinating website updates. After my day job I get to experiment with different languages and try to help MooTools developers with some of their questions.
What are the tools you couldn’t live without?
When I’m working on my PC I can’t work without Photoshop, jEdit for text editing, and Firefox/Firebug for debugging. I rely on TextMate.
What do you do in your free time?
I spend a lot of my free time obsessing over English Premier League soccer, creating new plugins to share with the MooTools community, and sneaking in a few hours of XBOX.
Current favorite apps?
I love Tweetie and TextMate. TextMate is the most useful and flexible development tools I’ve ever used. I also enjoy GitX to visualize repository commits.
What OSs do you prefer?
I actually prefer Windows XP if I’m working on a PC. I have Snow Leopard on my Mac and love it. I’d prefer to work on a Mac all day.
Small pic for your Wokrplace?
Favorite: Colors, Font, Languages (PHP, Ruby), JS Framework?
I tend to fall in love with the greys like #EEE, #CCC, #999. I’m definitely a sans-serif font lover, Lucida Grande being my favorite. I love tinkering with PHP on the server side. As you can probably guess, MooTools is my javascript framework of choice.
The things or source that inspired you?
My biggest inspirations are usually the things that bug me about other websites. I make a list of those frustrations and create jQuery and MooTools plugins to fix them. I’m also hugely inspired by my brothers on the MooTools team — they’re a brilliant collection of problem-solvers.
What’s do you prefer, the freelance work or the full time employee?
I enjoy freelance; the freedom to work the way that’s most comfortable for you and to experiment is best. Full time jobs can be rigid in every sense of the job: lack of client selection, freedom in type of work, etc. Full time positions are generally safe so it does have its advantages.
Your personnel projects and goals for 2010?
My goals for 2010 are to continue spreading the word about MooTools and to learn another server-side language; possibly server-side javascript, ruby, or python.
