Ian Collins
Who is Ian Collins?
Not actually a geek, but I understand why it might look that way. I do love to code and design, especially when it’s part of a product that myself and others will use.
Where and when did you start programming?
Well, I didn’t get started on an Apple II like other guys mostly because I didn’t have electricity at home till I was nearly in my teens. I did, however, do some BASIC coding on my TI-83. I think I made a program that took in a person’s name and would return an insult based on what name it was. In high school I took a programming/CS class every year – started on Turbo Pascal and worked up to C++. At that time I also taught myself general web development.
jQuery or Mootools? And why?
MooTools, of course. I tend to implement a lot of my features/products in JavaScript, so I need a framework with a clean, though-out API that provides ways for me to organize my code into logical chunks. MooTools satisfies those requirements with flying colors. Its modularity also means I don’t need to include the whole thing for every project I’m working on – every piece of the framework lives in its own file, with dependencies mapped perfectly between them. I build my own JavaScript this way as well – a generalized, re-usable class for each piece of functionality that can be included into any one of my projects. This is something you see a lot in the MooTools community, and less-so in jQuery’s.
Also, since I generally build my own apps from scratch, the global namespace and native extension stuff that people bitch about has never been an issue for me (I wouldn’t include two frameworks on the same page because I’m not an ass). Rather, those are the things allow me to write much more beautiful code, faster.
Basically what it comes down to is: I’m writing software, not adding some widgets to my blog.
You favorite Languages?
JavaScript is my favorite. It’s not necessarily the best/prettiest language (although in many ways it is), but it’s the only way to build rad, interactive web apps. I use Ruby for some other things, namely the webapp layer and scripts for my dev machine. I can deal with Objective-C, especially the recent features Apple has implemented. If I wasn’t actually building anything useful, I’d love to use some of my old college favorites: Lisp, Scheme and Haskell. Those were a blast to code in, but I was mostly just building interpreters, y-combinators and other useless crap.
What does your typical day look like?
Wake up, diddle my iPad for a bit (RSS), clean-up, feed and play with the cat, walk to work (a few blocks), crank out a shit-ton of JavaScript and hang out with my coworkers, go home, help my fiancé cook a delicious meal,
read and/or watch some TV programs, work on my photography, maybe code a bit more on something for BankSimple and/or a side project, sleep.
Weekends are a whole other thing since I generally don’t touch a computer and focus more on being in the woods and hiking/biking great distances with my lady.
What do you do in your free time?
Photography, traveling and hanging out in nature. Generally all at the same time. If I’m in town and the weather is nice I’ll typically go on a bike ride or hike. When I’m not doing those things I tend to stay in and work on small art projects.
Current favorite apps?
Reeder for the Mac, iPad and iPhone. Aperture for my photography. Game Center has been fun. Actually – everything that Apple has produced in the last few years (those guys are insane). Some other various iPhone/Mac apps I’ve enjoyed using recently: AirBnB, 1Password, Instapaper, DropBox, Notify, Netflix, Boxee, PlainText, Evernote, GitX and Path. As for webapps: Tumblr, Laterstars, JSFiddle, GitHub and probably some others I can’t remember.
What OS do you prefer?
OSX is the only thing I will use for development. For reading blogs, gaming and general farting-around, iOS is definitely a thing.
Small picture for your Workplace?
That’s my desk at the BankSimple office in SF. There’s a 15″ MBP off to the left that you can’t see. I use that screen for GitX and chats, and the main screen for TextMate (2 columns), Safari and Terminal.
Name something that has inspired you recently?
My coworkers at BankSimple and what we’re building. We’re actually building a way to do banking that people will want to use. It’s going to be insane.
What do you prefer (and why)? Freelance work or full time employment?
Absolutely full-time employment. I’ve dabbled with freelance work and the pressure of always having something to do (the more hours you work, the more money you make) wasn’t for me. With full-time gigs you can take off at five, go home and completely shut off or work on personal projects. Beyond the live/work balance, I find that building and working on a single product for a year can be much more rewarding than working on several products in multi-week sprints. You get a great sense of ownership, and can really take the time to make it perfect.
What are your personal projects and goals for 2011?
Personal goals: get married, buy a car, travel to at least two countries (shooting for three) and spend at least 20 nights in the woods. All of those will be done with my life co-pilot, Christine.
I also want to finish up a couple of iPhone apps I’ve been working on and put more content up on my various blogs (thebigcaption.com, furiousdingdong.com).
On the work side I want to launch BankSimple with my excellent coworkers, and open-source my current JavaScript project – a framework called Butcher that will allow us to drop much of the webapp (i.e. Rails) code in favor of doing more in JavaScript (on the client side). Building a site using JavaScript that calls a JSON-delivering API and stores as much as it can in browser memory is, in our opinion, the way to build sites in 2011.
