Remy Sharp
Who is Remy Sharp?
Developer first and foremost, but I’ve also been seen to speak at conferences, write and contribute to books, and run my own conference. I’ve been writing code from an early age, my dad plonking me in front of a spectrum magazine listing for Star Wars. Hours of little finger typing culminating in some utterly deflating spectrum basic error. I wasn’t put off though, and I’ve come to love problem solving through code and use it as my creative outlet.
Code aside: I’m happily married and have been with my lady for over 13 years and currently holding the status of “soon to be father”, and outside of that, I generally only get excited about snowboarding and Christmas. A strange mix I realise, but perhaps it’s the cold season that does it for me!
Do you have a personal Brand?
Although I didn’t start out intending to create a personal brand, I’d say now, yes, very much so. I have a lot of different presences on the web and I don’t do a good job of consolidating them back to my own company, so instead they’ve become part of the “Remy” brand.
I rarely push my applications or projects on people I meet or the readers of my blogs, so they continue to just see me as an individual, which continues to build my own brand.
My plan is to try to consolidate my assets on the web so that at least people visiting my sites realise that they all go back to one person – who in addition runs a business and can be hired.
Why Jquery?
I’m lazy. But I’m lazy in the good way. Lazy developers, the right kind of lazy, make better developers. That goes for any role actually. If you can find a way to ditch the donkey work, the work that you don’t enjoy doing and is a pain in the arse to get through, then you should. I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m saying that if something else or someone else can do it for you, and you can build on that, then you should.
jQuery was a library that when I discovered it back in June 2007, gave me DOM scripting and navigation without really having to write very much code at all. I can write a CSS selector and I’m in the position in the DOM I need to be. Then adding event handles was a doddle. It cut my development time down massively once I got the hang of thinking in terms of CSS selection rather than manually stepping through DOM nodes and picking my way around the crash site that is the DOM APIs.
As jQuery matured and got more exposure I found my colleagues, mostly designers or dedicated back end developers wanted to know how to perform some simple JavaScript. It was easy to evangelise jQuery them because the most basic CSS selectors are a snap to learn and they could focus on the bit of the problem solving that was important, i.e. the business logic they wanted to add to the page, rather than worrying about how to, say, construct an XHR object and send an Ajax request.
I’m lazy, and if I can defer the donkey work to a library that handles the donkey work perfectly, like jQuery does, I’m going to, and then I’m going to be able to focus on the complicated and interesting parts of the problem, and for me, that’s what’s worth working on.
What does your typical day look like?
A typically day will start by cursing myself for getting up too late, say 10am, but I’ve done my 10 years service to another company and now work for myself, so I guess if I want to start late: I can!
I’ll usually check out email and Twitter. I work from home mostly and Twitter particularly is my lifeline out to the real world, friends and peers. I probably spend too long in the day checking out Twitter and email. I’ll kick that habit one day.
If I’m working on a client project I’m simple sit down and get coding. At the moment, I’m working on a couple of books, so I spent a lot of time creating demos, exploring APIs and generally hacking around in the browser. I’ve very recently learnt that I’m extremely effective if I turn the Internet off completely and work offline. It’s kind of like what I’d imagine “tough love” would be like!
I’ll work up to the point in which my wife comes home. Eat, etc, but then get back to work in the evening. I use the word “work” loosely here, work is anything on the computer, though in reality, it’s not work, well, not paid work!
Often I’ll keep working up until around 1am – after which I don’t sleep too well because my head is still buzzing with ideas, code and the fact I still can’t sleep.
Basically I spend a *lot* of time just playing in browsers.
The only variation on this typical day is Fridays – which I’ll work out of a cafe and no doubt bump in to other local developers. Less work is achieved when other people are around, but it’s keeping me sane!
What do you do in your free time?
lol. I don’t really believe in “free time”. There’s time that I’m not around a computer, that’ll be when I go away, and that’ll be snowboarding if I can keep convincing the wife :)
In my “free time”, I try to be creative. My creative outlet is the computer, so it’s in front of that damn machine again, and I play with ideas, poke around APIs and generally make stuff.
Current favorite apps?
- TextMate.
- Tweetie (but I should probably reconsider the amount of time spent here).
- Webkit, Opera (alpha), Chrome (dev channel), Firefox (minefield) – basically nightly browser builds.
What OS do you prefer?
I’m a purely Mac OS house at the moment, but I do run virtual machines to do my browser testing. I suspect soon enough I’ll have to buy a PC with various Windows versions, but I’m holding off as long as possible!
As for flavour of OS, I’ve had untold trouble with Snow Leopard, so I’d say Leopard would be my favourite so far, but I guess I wouldn’t have the sexy 3D CSS3 transition slickness without Snow Leopard!
Small picture for your Workplace?
For my workplace or of my workplace? I wasn’t sure which you wanted so, here’s a picture of my workplace (while it’s hooked up for a screencasting session for jQuery for Designers ):
And cafe working (or possibly not):
Favorite: Color, Font, Language, JS Framework?
Colour: ginger. I (was) ginger, I got grief for it as a kid, now I say ginger’s the new black. I’m sure no-one will agree with me, but I’ve made sure my conference used oranges and the new rebrand of my company is orange (coming soon)!
Fonts: I’m rather partial to Cooper Black, Rockwell and Myriad Pro for my slides. Although I think typography is really interesting I want to learn more, I’m pretty sure I’m not making as much use of fonts as I should be!
Language: JavaScript every time. I got in to JavaScript because you didn’t need to download compilers, SDKs or any of that nonsense – especially when you only had a 1.4Kb connection. With JavaScript I could open Notepad, open IE3 or IE4 (at the time) and play. I could even use JavaScript outside of the browser in Windows via the Windows Shell Scripting language (…or was that VB script – I forget, probably on purpose!).
JS Framework: certainly the one I have the most enjoyment out of working with is jQuery. But I’m always trying out other frameworks if they’re appropriate. While the mobile version of jQuery is in production, I’ve been working with Brian Leroux (of PhoneGap fame) contributing to the mobile JS library called XUI – designed to be über small.
Name something that has inspired you recently?
People who are genuinely friendly and giving. I’m generally a shy chap (unless I know you or I’ve had a drink or two). I went to SxSW last year on my own and I met some of the most inspiring people I’ve come across. Not speaker, not the rock stars, just the normal day to day working folk like you and me. They welcomed me, befriended me and I’ve continued to meet people like that throughout last year and this year. That’s something that has really inspired me to try to give more, share as much knowledge as I can and be supportive where I believe in their values or project or what have you.
What do you prefer (and why)? Freelance work or full time employment?
Freelancer, or rather: working for myself. I was employed for 10 years in the same company taking straight from university (before I ultimately never finished I might add). Since it was a small start up I got to learn the ropes of a small company and see how nimble they can be. As the company grew, so did the red tape and the politics.
I wouldn’t say I should have started my own company earlier, because my previous experience is my foundation and without it I wouldn’t be able to run my business the way I do. Having my own company, being able to decide when I work, whether early in the morning, or late at night, being able chose what I work on, deciding at short notice that I’m going to speak at a conference, dedicate time to blogging a writing – you can’t beat it.
I may be a developer, but my job is creative, and by calling my own shots and choosing what I work on means I get to stick all my fat little fingers in lots of different little pies and keep things mixed up and fresh!
What are your personnel projects and goals for 2010?
Gosh, lots! Keep pressing on with jQuery for Designer screencasts, and try to get one out every month (at the very least), and generally blog more. Do more teaching via speaking and workshops on jQuery (for designers I can) and the HTML5 APIs. Finish the jQuery for Designers and Introducing HTML5 books. Run another awesome Full Frontal JavaScript conference. Raise a baby with my wife. If I only succeed in one of these, it’ll be the last one.
2010 for me personally is going to be huge, and I’m looking forward to every moment!
