Who is Misko Hevery?

… works as an Agile Coach at Google where he is responsible for coaching Googlers to maintain the high level of automated testing culture. Previously he worked at Adobe, Sun Microsystems, Intel, and Xerox (to name a few), where he became an expert in building web applications in web related technologies such as Java, JavaScript, Flex and ActionScript. He is very involved in Open Source community and and currently working on the angular project to make it easier for people to build AJAX style web-apps.

Where and when did you start programming?

I started programing when I was about 8 years old. That was around 1984, and back then in Slovakia it was a big deal. I lived in a very small town with about 200 people, and we were the only ones who had a computer. It was Sinclair ZX Spectrum 64K. I first learned BASIC, but then quickly moved on to Pascal and assembler for the Z80. I kept up with the programing languages until I moved to the US, where it became more of a formal education in HighSchool. We had a very good Advanced Placement program, and great teachers which gave us challenging problems to solve. I then attended Rochester Institute of Technology where I got BS/MS in computer engineer, which is actually the hardware side of the computers. But somehow I moved from designing chips to programing firmware, to software and now I do mostly web-applications.

About Angular?

Angular is an Open-Source project which I started with my good friend Adam Abrons. The goal was to enable web-designers (non-programmers) to build simple app like websites, but it quickly became more then that, as it evolved to a web-framework, (but I hesitate to call it a framework, since a better way to think about it is a better browser.) Angular extends the HTML vocabulary with additional elements and attributes which gives you the ability to project your application data in a declarative way to HTML for the user. I like to say that angular is what a browser would have been if it was designed for web apps. Angular really changes the way you think about building web-applications. Main difference is that your application has no DOM manipulation code. All the description of how DOM should be manipulated is specified declarative in HTML. But it is more then that. angular allows you to write your own markup so you can build up vocabulary which makes sense for your application, kind of a DSL. Over time we added depency-injection,  resource management, deep-linking, and lots of other things which are useful when building web-applications. One place where angular is unique is that it has an amazing testability story. A lot of technical decisions have been made to make sure that it will be easy to tests an app built with angular.

Your favorite IDE. Language. JS Framework?

I am an eclipse guy. I have tried to change several times, to InteliJ, but I just can’t get over the key-bindings, rusty SWING UI, and the lack of good way to rearrange the editors in the window. But that is a religious debate, no need to go there.

I started doing Java a while back, so it is by far the language I have written the most code in. I used to be very much into strong typing and I just could not understand those people (ruby mainly) writing apps without type system. Sure you have tests, but you need to have the help of the compiler. Angular is my first JavaScript applications, and it has changed the way I look at JavaScript and on the need or the lack of typing. Typing as the name suggests, is just that, a whole lot of typing. I find JavaScript amazing because it is such a simple language, yet it is so powerful. Yes, I know there are lots of dumb things in JavaScript too, but I can explain JavaScript to you in few hours, where as I need days for Ruby, Java or Python.

My favorite JS framework is angular (if you can call it a framework.) Hey, its my baby, and so I am partial, but jQuery would be the runner up, if angular would be disqualified. But what I am super excited about lately is not a framework at all, but node.js. Node.js is amazing. It changes the way servers are written, and not because it is in JavaScript, but because it is done in non-blocking way, (which JavaScript and the browser popularized). I think Node.js and with it JavaScript will be the next Java.

What does your typical day look like?

I wake up early, usually before 6am. Not my hour, but my 8 month old son, is up and he wants to play. He is so excited to see me at that hour, so I can’t say no. I then car-pool with my wife to work, fortunate for both of us, she works just down street from Google. Google likes Angular so much, that it is my full time job, along with another Googler Igor Minar. Together we try to make angular even better. At lunch I usually go for a couple of mile run. I used to dislike running, but after reading “Born to run” and getting a pair of Five-Fingers, running is actually fun. In the afternoon, is more of angular, and then we head back home where our son is excited to see us.

What do you do in your free time?

Free time is hard to come by, but I enjoy biking and rock-climbing. My wife has a great imagination, so she always comes up with a project around the house. Whether it is installing picket-fence, building an arbor, or digging holes for her garden, she keeps me busy. Turns out some physical work does wonders for your mind. I get some of the best ides when working around the house.

Current favorite apps?

Node.js, Pandora, Groveshark

What OS do you prefer?

Mac OS X: Power of unix with a sexy interface. What more can you ask for.

Small picture for your Workplace?

My workplace is quite simple. Just a desk with monitor, keyboard and mouse, and a place to dock my notebook. I don’t have clutter, as I think fewer things one has the easier it is. Moving is always simple for me. :-)

Name something that has inspired you recently?

I am a passive observer on Twitter, and I tend to follow a lot of people which tweet about technical things, mainly web. It is inspiring too see hove the web, with JavaScript, HTML5 is taking off. So much has happened in just few short years. We went from IE6 being the de-facto standard, to being almost irrelevant, and all thanks to hard work of folks like Mozila FireFox, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome. It is almost like peer pressure. Look what the other kids are doing, we better catch up, and IE9 seems to be turning into a decent browser. In the end consumer wins, as web-applications are become more of what the name suggests, application on the web. The area where this is most interesting is Palm Pre, it is basically a phone, where all apps are web-pages. What a clever and inspiring idea.

What do you prefer (and why)? Freelance work or full time employment?

They both have their advantages. Currently I am quite happy with Google, and so I am enjoying the fact that Google is letting me work on my angular project. It is unlikely that angular could gain so much popularity and I would have enough time to get it to the point which it is today.  In the past I have done a lot of freelance work, and there is something exciting about doing work for yourself, but it is a lot of work.

What are your personal projects and goals for 2011?

The goal for 2011 is to spend most of my free time with my son as to give him a good start. He just started crawling so it is quite hard to keep up with him but it is quite exciting. It also turns out that he never turns down Cheerios and blueberry and is motivated enough to crawl through the whole room to get it when he sees it. Turns out that you can use such a reward to get all kinds of interesting data on how he thinks. For example until recently he was very motivated to eat the mirror when he saw Cheerios in it, he knows way better now. He can now take apart two plastic cups to get to his treat in the middle, and he knows that when I point, there must be a treat under it someplace.

Who is Bryan Veloso?

I used to call myself a designer. I don’t know how applicable that is anymore. I’ve also tried to call myself a developer but my current skills say otherwise. I don’t even know if I’m really a Filipino.

What I do know though is that I love to enjoy my days learning, laughing, building and teaching on this boat we call the Internet. At the time of this writing, I’m 27, I work at GitHub, I have a wonderful fianceé of nearly 8 years and I reside in Los Angeles, CA with my 5 satanicadorable cats.

Where and when did you start programming?

It could have been when I started theming WordPress, but I don’t really count that. My love for the cosmic powers that you all humbly refer to as programming started around 4 years ago when a friend of mine, the venerable Jeffrey A. Croft indirectly brought Django to my attention. It was a life changing moment and my career path completely forked away from where it was supposed to go once I started diving in.

You favorite Languages/Frameworks? And why?

Python and Django.

The fact that a friend was working with Django was a huge draw for me and Python was a language I loved stylistically, and as time passed, I found great joy coding in it.

My reasons for picking one language over another could be seen as superficial, and I wouldn’t argue with that. Coming from a background of absolutely no fundamental programming knowledge, choosing a language based on superficial characteristics was all I had to go on. So the reason I disliked Ruby at the time I made that choice was because I hated seeing “end.” Haters gonna hate.

That’s since changed, and the distaste has been replaced with an eagerness to learn (as long as it helps to get me to an end).

What does your typical day look like?

These days, I wake up at about 9:30. I spend some time with my iPhone reading up on the day’s news–through Reeder, Twitter and GitHub–then head to my fortress of distraction to read some more. Then I design and hack, depending on what my scatterbrained head feels like doing. My fiancée joins me–as our desks are next to each other–and the process rinses and repeats with some eating, gaming and pacing until I lose track of time and eventually go to bed.

What do you do in your free time?

Free time seems to come and go depending on how focused I feel at any given moment, but most days when I find a free moment I don’t seem to stray farther than 15 feet from the computer. Most of the time I peer over to see what my fiancée happens to be watching, usually something having to do with J-pop and Japanese idols. When that’s not happening, I hop on an array of consoles and play a good RPG or snipe some heads off in Halo or Call of Duty.

Current favorite apps?

Alfred, Dropbox, 1Password, Propane, Reeder, Twitter for Mac and iPad, GitHub.

What OS do you prefer?

I got my first Mac (a 1st generation Mac mini) through one of those “get free stuff for doing offers that’ll spam you with spammy spam for years to come, making you regret the fact that you ever did this in the first place” offers. Despite all the junk mail–after OS X–I never looked back.

Small picture for your Workplace?

Name something that has inspired you recently?

With design, it’s honestly been hard. There’s so much awesome signal (read: Dribbble) out there that it’s all turning to noise in my head. It’s hard to keep up with and I’ve been finding more discouragement than inspiration lately. I get my best results with my favorite pair of headphones, a song whose lyrics I can’t understand and a pair of closed eyes.

With development, joining GitHub has inspired me tremendously. There are so many hideously smart people working there that my brain can’t take all the awesome that seeps from that company’s pores.

On a more general level, I’ve recently been inspired by the people in our industry with all of their successes coming into the new year–the job moves, the company launches, the small open source project progressions. It’s extremely uplifting and provides me with a drive that no CSS gallery or book can match.

What do you prefer (and why)? Freelance work or full time employment?

Having done both, there are mouth-watering pros and headdesk-inducing cons to each. When I took the job with GitHub, it was the first time in almost 5 years that I welcomely worked for “the man.”

I’m an entrepreneur at heart and being my own boss will always have a place in my heart. I love having control over my own destiny, whether that destiny is being financially stable or financially underground. But over the past couple of years, I grew tired of that. A lot of things happened in between and then GitHub came along. So, we’ll see how this full-time thing goes. It’s been quite a blast so far!

What are your personal projects and goals for 2011?

I have a few projects that are very close to my heart and that of my fiancée’s. A few of those are still just ideas, but one of them has been in the works for what will be 3 years this March. I hope to have it in public beta by then. Also, I’d love to have a better handle of Ruby (because it sort of runs GitHub) by the end of the year, my distaste with “end”s having subsided.

But more important than any of that, will be getting to and surviving our wedding in August–and I say that with complete pride, excitement and anticipation. It’ll hopefully be an amazing night that’s been an extremely long time coming.

Who is José Valim?

@josevalim An open source developer, a speaker, a musician and an entrepreneur. I’m co-founder and lead developer at Plataforma Tecnologia – a development and consultancy company focused on Ruby and Rails, based in Brazil – and a Rails Core Team member. I am happily living in Kraków with my wife!

Where and when did you start programming?

I was 12 years old when I had my first contact with programming. At that time my parents bought a computer, which came with a BASIC book. This experience lasted no more than 2 hours as I failed to do the calculator example from the first chapter. :)

However, when I was 17 years old at university, I found that my failed experience five years before was called “programming”. I took C classes there and I was known by professors for asking unusual questions as: “what happens if I don’t include the library headers?” or “what if I pass an invalid argument here?”. A few professors quickly understood that I wanted more than introductory material in the courses and a few eventually explained to me how C compilers worked behind the scenes. It was a fun experience!

A few months later, my dark ages started. :)

First, I decided to use Flash and learn ActionScript by myself in order to create my band’s website. Next, I did PHP development with MySQL and PostgreSQL as freelancer. That was pretty much the deal until my fourth year in university when Hugo Baraúna, who played guitar with me in the band, invited me to be part of a web startup.

In the startup, they were using a new framework for web development called (surprise, surprise) Ruby on Rails.

Why Ruby/Rails?

Since my experience before using Ruby on Rails was limited to PHP, Active Record really amazed me in the beginning. However, today I clearly see that my true love is really Ruby! Ruby gives me the freedom, fun and motivation to work and contribute to open source as I do today!

What does your typical day look like?

Hrm, it is actually hard for me to describe a typical day. They vary a lot, but let’s try it!

Currently, I work from my home office in Poland and I always start my day reading my e-mails. After that it’s just a “controlled chaotic schedule”. Basically I work on Rails, other open source projects, Plataforma Tecnologia’s customers’ projects, preparing talks and presentations, writing blog posts or conferencing via Skype.

Finally, due to time zone difference between Brazil, sometimes I need to stay up late, while other times my wife makes me go to bed early!

What do you do in your free time?

Most of my free time today goes out to family time. Sometimes I do enjoy playing the guitar and I really hope to get an electric piano soon.

Current favorite apps?

Github, codebase, typewith.me, campfire and dropbox. Without them I couldn’t get my work done.

What OS do you prefer?

OS X, Snow Leopard. Although I wish I had less snow around here.

Small picture for your Workplace?

Ok, this is the current picture of my table, no cheating, no changes:

Favorite: Color, Font, Language, JS Framework?

Blue, Monaco, Ruby, jQuery.

Name something that has inspired you recently?

I definitely love how Plataforma Tecnologia is shaping up and every single day I get inspired by someone in our team doing something different or creative. Although most of it is internal to the company, part goes out as open source contributions helping a lot of people out there.

The Rails Core Team also inspires me. It is a big team (today we are 9), working on a big project with big challenges but we are still able to meet every single of these challenges with simple and useful solutions.

Finally, I am frequently surprised and inspired by the different music that I hear around Europe. Mentions go to Phoenix (French band), Sigur Rós (Icelandic band) and The Swell Season (Irish and Czech duo).

What do you prefer (and why)? Freelance work or full time employment?

I like a mix of both. As a co-founder of Plataforma Tecnologia, I face different challenges from different projects frequently, just like a freelancer would, and I also get the change to be constantly building something meaningful, in this case Plataforma Tecnologia itself. So I have the best of both worlds.

What are your personal projects and goals for 2010?

I am very thankful that this year was already full of achievements: Plataforma Tecnologia has doubled its size compared to one year ago, I was invited to be part of Rails Core, I had a successful talk at Euruko (biggest Ruby conference in Europe), I won a Ruby Hero award and we shipped Rails 3!

On the personal front, I want to get back at studying music and finally start to learn some Polish. But I believe the most exciting news is on the open source front. We have great plans for Rails 3.1 and we also want to get Devise 1.2, with OAuth 2 support, out.

Who is PJ Hyett?

A simple man with big dreams.

Where and when did you start programming?

I bought “Teach Yourself to Create Web Pages in 24 hours” from an Office Max bargain bin in Naperville, IL circa 1998.

About working in GitHub?

I joined Chris and Tom a few months after they started hacking on it on weekends. Chris and I had built another website around the same time, but it became clear that GitHub was the far more interesting (and potentially profitable) product so I started devoting all of my time to that. I can’t believe that was almost three years ago, it’s been a blast.

What does your typical day look like?

I don’t know if I really have a typical day. It could involve waking up at 6am to talk to potential GitHub:FI customers in London or sleeping until 6pm because I’m jet-lagged from our last trip.

What do you do in your free time?

Avoiding wedding planning and drinking bourbon.

Current favorite apps?

Web apps: Google Voice, GrubHub and Kayak. Desktop apps: Mailplane, VMWare Fusion and PDFpen (although it could
be a lot better)

What OS do you prefer?

OS X, but I don’t mind Ubuntu.

Small picture for your Workplace?

I work at this table at our office:

otherwise I’m working at home on my couch or at my desk.

Favorite: Language, JS Framework?

French, JQuery.

Name something that has inspired you recently?

Traveling internationally. For all of the things you take for granted and all of the things you’ve yet to achieve.

What do you prefer (and why)? Freelance work or full time employment?

I prefer full-time work. Jumping between projects is tiresome especially when you don’t have any skin the game. Helping to run GitHub is exactly what I want to be doing.

What are your personal projects and goals for 2010?

Get married and help fix the economy of Greece by honeymooning there.

Who is Rick Olson?

Part open source programmer, father of one, and comic book fanboy.  I live in Portland, OR, and work at GitHub.  Before that, I launched two bootstrapped web products as the lead developer.

Where and when did you start programming?

I was working the night shift in the Air Force in 2000, so I picked up a PHP book out of boredom.  My first task was to replace my static HTML blogging workflow with a sweet PHP system.  I had a friend with spare room on his server that hooked me up with free hosting.  He taught me how to telnet into a unix system and upload PHP scripts over ICQ.

Best thing about working with GitHub?

Open Source has consumed a large part of my life for the last five years.  I’m really stoked about being in a position to improve that process for other developers.  It’s great working with an awesome team that’s also passionate about this.

What does your typical day look like?

I log into Campfire around 9 or so to see what’s going on.  From there, I’ll either help with code-related support issues, hack on open source, or work on some internal project.

What do you do in your free time?

I am an expert Rock Band drummer, and a terrible live drummer.  It’s summer now, so I get to spend a lot of time with my son.  I also play video games and go see live music when interesting acts come through town.

Current favorite apps?

While working, I’m constantly using Propane, git, and Textmate.  In my off hours, I use Comixology and Kindle a lot on the iPad.

Small picture for your Workplace?

I’m still working remote for another few weeks, so it’s just my Macbook Pro and me at some random cafe.  If I stay at home, I alternate between my bean bag or the couch.

Favorite: Color, Font, Language, JS Framework?

Green, Monaco, Ruby, and Node.js.

Name something that has inspired you recently?

I’d have to say Node.js and asynchronous web development in general. Whether Node.js becomes the next hot thing in web development or not, asynchronous programming is on a lot more minds now.  There are even several experiments in getting Rails on an asynchronous core.

What do you prefer (and why)? Freelance work or full time employment?

Full time.  I like being able to focus on a single product, rather than having to change gears a lot.  Product development goes far beyond the initial launch.  There are always a lot of improvements to make after it first goes out the gate.  Freelance work can be fun and profitable, it just wasn’t for me.

What are your personnel projects and goals for 2010?

I’d love to get my 9 year old son on GitHub with his first commit.  I feel like this could be his year.

Who is Fogus?

A programmer in Northern Virginia.  I am co-authoring a book entitled The Joy of Clojure with Chris Houser.

About Clojure?

Clojure is a practical mixture of Common Lisp, Scheme, ML, Haskell, T, Java, and its own novelty situated on the JVM and CLR that has worked to resurrect the viability of using Lisp in industry.

Clojure IDE?

I personally use Emacs for my Clojure programming but I’m not an advocate for it unless you’re already familiar.  If I were to recommend one I would say to choose the IDE that you’re familiar with (Eclipse, Vi, Emacs, Netbeans, IDEA, or JEdit).

Clojure vs Scala?

I like both.  I’ve written my fair share of Scala at my job and I’ve mostly enjoyed it so far.  However, I am passionate about Clojure. Scala’s static typing has been beneficial to me and my team, but it required a lot of thought to get a rock-solid domain model fleshed out.  Lisp on the other hand is the original agile language, and I’m more productive using Clojure than any language I’ve used.

What does your typical day look like?

I wake up at 6am, get myself and the kids ready for school, and drive 15 minutes to work.  I really like my job because it affords me the opportunity to get my hands into a lot of different languages and domains while being surrounded by extremely smart programmers.  During the day I like to go for a walk and think about the problems that I’m working on.  Nothing helps more to get my head straight than a walk (except for sleeping).  When I get home in the evening I have dinner with the family and listen to my wife play piano until its time for the kids to go to bed.  After that I try to get some personal coding in and finish the day reading a book.

What do you do in your free time?

I read like an insane person.  I like to code.  I also like to go to local museums with the family.  There is a local Captial Area Clojure Users Group that holds monthly meetings that I love to attend.  Watching baseball is usually fun, but my favorite team has made that very difficult to stomach lately.

Current favorite apps?

I try not to get too reliant on any particular app or configuration — I use (mostly) default Emacs bindings for heaven’s sake.  Having said that, it’s unpleasant for me to write Clojure code without Aquamacs with clojure-mode and Paredit.  I’m perpetually on the lookout for a note-taking application better than a set of nested directories and text files (to no avail), so at this moment I’m exploring Evernote.  Thanks to Instapaper, looking at the raw Internet feels crass.

Small picture for your Workplace?

Favorite: Language, JS Framework?

My favorite language is Clojure.  I am not extremely well-versed in Javascript, but I have used jQuery and liked it very much.  While it stretches the definition of framework, I’m very excited about CoffeeScript and hope to explore it further.

Name something that has inspired you recently?

I attended a recent Clojure Studio with Rich Hickey and Stuart Halloway and while I had met them both previously, it was nice to have them available to answer my idiotic questions.  Their passion and intelligence was mind-blowing to say the least.

What do you prefer (and why)? Freelance work or full time employment?

At the moment I like full-time employment because of the team that I’m working with and the freedom that I’m given to explore.  However, in the absence of these things I would probably prefer freelance.

What are your personnel projects and goals for 2010?

I’m currently working on a contracts-programming framework for Clojure named Trammel that I would like to get to a 1.0 release this year.  Aside from that, I’m hoping to help advocate Clojure now and into the future.  I hate to admit it, but I’m not very skilled with regular expressions or SQL — something I would like to remedy before 2011.  I’ve always managed to get by, but these are definite deficiencies in my skill-set.

Who is Chris Nagele?

I’m the founder of Wildbit, a web software company. We build and run web products including Beanstalk, Newsberry, and Postmark.

About Wildbit?

Wildbit originally started as a web software consulting company in 1999. We’ve built and designed web sites and products for clients including Nuzizo, MeetPips, LoseItorLoseIt, and more. In 2009, due to the rapid growth of Wildbit’s own products, the company shifted to products only. We now only offer design services on a limited basis.

Our team of ten is 100% virtual, located in six countries including US, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Bulgaria, and Serbia. Each person works from their own office or home.

How do stay productive in a virtual team?

Most people think it is a challenge to stay productive with a virtual team due to lack of control and in person communication. I’d argue that since we are virtual, we are actually more productive. The key is having the right people who are self-motivated. Once that happens the benefits of virtual work really show. It allows for complete focus and reduces distraction, which is key to our type of work.

That being said, we do rely on tools like Skype, iChat, Lighthouse, Beanstalk, Campfire and other tools to keep in touch. We also have annual retreats in places like Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Turkey where the entire team gets together to discuss goals and just hang out.

How do you find inspiration for an idea for a new project?

For me, inspiration only comes when doing something else. For instance, the inspiration for Beanstalk came when reading the book Ship It! I wanted more people to have access to version control without the hassle of managing a server, which was also my own personal pain point. Postmark, our latest product, is another good example. Even though we have a robust email infrastructure for Newsberry, we were almost blind to the volume and statistics for our email delivery in Beanstalk. Postmark solved that problem.

What does your typical day look like?

I actually get up pretty late, around 9am or so. Each morning the entire team has a 10am chat in Campfire to discuss how iterations are going and plan the day, so I give myself some time to catch up before it starts. We keep it short, but allow enough time to keep aligned and solve problems. Since each person on the team is several time zones ahead, the mornings are usually packed with tasks like discussing new designs, reviewing new features, and planning iterations.

After that, I spend the rest of the day writing (blog, twitter, content), doing some support, and reviewing the plans for our products. I usually finish up the day by going to the gym.

What do you do in your free time?

My wife and I live in center city Philadelphia, so we spend a lot of time enjoying the city. We also travel as much as possible, which is a clear benefit of having a virtual team and running a software company.

Current favorite apps?

Chrome at the moment. Most of the apps I use are browser based, so having a fast, clean browser makes everything a better experience.

Small picture for your Workplace?

This one is hard to define. I work from home, from an amazing coworking space in Philadelphia called Independence Hall, and from anywhere in the world I travel. The only thing consistent is the laptop (Macbook Air) or desktop (iMac) I use.

What are your personal projects and goals for 2010?

We’re fully focused on our products. We’re only a team of ten people, but the energy that is going into Beanstalk, Newsberry, and Postmark this year is amazing. My main goal is to keep the momentum going.

Who is Debasish Ghosh?

I am the CTO of Anshinsoft Corp, though I would like to call myself a technology evangelist, a hacker and a programmer at heart. I love programming and, if it were a socially acceptable norm, I would like to do only that and nothing else in my day job. I have more than 20 years of programming experience, started with C, graduated to C++ and then on to Java. My love for JVM still continues. The affiliation for language however has changed to Scala and Clojure. I also enjoy programming in Erlang and have been desperately trying to get my heads into Haskell. I am an open source hacker, creator of open source projects sjson and scouchdb and a committer in the Akka project.

Why Scala?

I do not subscribe to the view that pure functional programming is the be all and end all to developing software. I like object oriented technologies and feel that the right blend of OO and FP provides a viable mix for building modular software. Scala is object functional (actually Martin Odersky calls it post functional) and is a multi-paradigm language on the JVM. It has a rich type system, provides the right balance of purity and pragmatism, offers great concurrency features and above all an easier migration path for Java programmers. And for me the language fits like a glove coming from the verbose domain of Java programming. Its great fun programming in Scala. Another great plus that hybrid languages like Scala offers to developers coming from imperative programming background is that they provide a gateway to the pure functional languages like Haskell. Now that I have been programming in Scala for the last 2 years I find it easier to grok Haskell.

What does your typical day look like?

I have a day job where I try to do lots of interesting stuff involving multiple technology platforms, mostly on the JVM. We deliver back-office solutions for the capital market domain – hence there’s no dirth of interesting technology solutions cooking up within Anshinsoft. Occasionally you will also find me in many of those corporate and HR meetings that I have to attend on a regular basis at my workplace. On many occasions I am in long telecons with our clients discussing project issues or future roadmaps. I come back from office pretty late in the evening. I am not a party animal and love to stay indoors and spend time with my wife. After dinner, I usually do a couple of hours of hacking before I crash for the next day.

What do you do in your free time?

Of late, I hardly get any free time! Currently I am involved in three open source projects, all of them based on Scala.

• Sjson is a JSON serialization package for Scala objects.
• Scouchdb is a Scala driver and view server for CouchDB.
• Akka is a Scala/Java middleware that offers scalable, fault-tolerant concurrency and remoting through actors to applications on the JVM. It’s founded by Jonas Boner and I am a committer in the team.

Besides being involved in these 3 projects, I am writing a book named DSLs In Action to be published by Manning this summer. The MEAP is already available since October (http://manning.com/ghosh).

Still whenever I can manage some free time I jump on to some place else for a quiet week of solitude.

Current favorite apps?

• JRebel
• Specs
• Scalacheck
• Google Chrome
• Git

What OS do you prefer?

My hacking projects are almost exclusively on Ubuntu. It’s currently my preferred OS.

Small picture for your Workplace?

Favorite: Color, Font, Language, JS Framework?

• Color: Black
• Font: Inconsolata, Proggy
• Language: Scala, Clojure, C
• JS Framework: node.js

Name something that has inspired you recently?

• More committment to open source development
• Erlang as a middleware platform
• NoSQL

What do you prefer (and why)? Freelance work or full time employment?

Full time employment as a hacker where I don’t need to get involved in the chores of managerial activities.

What are your personnel projects and goals for 2010?

Complete the book, learn Haskell, contribute more in Akka, do more of Clojure

Who is Timothy Perrett?

I am a technical specialist at a division of Xerox corporation during the day, and a Lift and Akka committer during my spare time. More recently, I became an author and started writing a book on Lift called “Lift in Action” to be released later in 2010. I spend most of my time writing systems integration middleware and designing systems for our corporate customers.

Ruby or Scala? and why?

Ruby will always be my programming pocket knife, but Scala is my weapon of choice for production work. Not wanting to beat on Ruby, because it has some great pros, rather, Scala just works much better for the type of cross-platform work I usually do. If I just need to bash out a quick script to do something, or automate some task im working on, then sure, I’ll use Ruby. However, if I need to build a full web-application with lots of complex components Scala (and Lift) wins. easily. Its just a much nicer way of working and allows me a lot of flexibility and security that I didnt find with Ruby – for instance, inferred types at compile time keeps the code neat / light but still totally type-safe.

About Lift?

Lift is awesome, firstly from technical perspective, and secondly for its great community. The community was what actually persuaded me to stick around and learn Lift properly – its full of awesome smart people and no question is ever too dumb. We really like to foster newbies and respond to their questions in an effort to make their getting started and translation of understanding to be as pain-free as possible. Lift is without doubt the best web-framework I’ve ever used – it has a super great feature set and really lets users focus on their problem domain, not on framework level plumbing.

What does your typical day look like?

My working days usually involve getting up first thing, checking my emails then touching base with my team and then getting down to my tasks. In any given day it could either be going to see customers or straight development. My life is fortunately pretty varied.

What do you do in your free time?

Im massively into skiing during the winter months, so that has just finished occupying what little time I have when not writing the book or doing my day job. Now we are moving into summer I’ll be kayaking again soon as I live right by the river. I guess if im not doing either of those things then im usually hanging out in the garden having a beer with friends.

Current favorite apps?

Probably SBT (simple build tool). I’ve written some plugins for it and use it all the time now for my dev work and its just such a slick build tool… it blows away Maven and Any with ease.

What OS do you prefer?

Mac OSX all the way – no other operating system comes close! I also really like BSD and Ubuntu for deployment.

Small picture for your Workplace?

Favorite: Language, JS Framework?

Right now its gotta be cappuccino – the guys at 280 North are doing some amazing work with porting Cocoa to the browser and I think 2010 will be a big year for them. Its great for developers as you don’t have to worry about CSS and so forth, its just a clean, code-orientated approach.

Name something that has inspired you recently?

The Lift team. Working with awesome minds is very inspiring and i’ve learn so much from guys like David, Marius and Jonas.

What are your personnel projects and goals for 2010?

Of course im working on Lift in Action, so im aiming to have that in stores for around November – right now that is probably the biggest goal I have. I’m also really looking forward to Scala Days at EPFL this April… it will be the biggest meeting on Lift committers ever so thats going to be really awesome. I’m also looking forward to Devoxx this year and hoping to speak there again. 

Who is Dr Nic Williams?

I tentatively started referring to myself as ‘Dr Nic’ in 2006 on forums and blog comments after I created my blog http://drnicwilliams.com I acquired that domain only because some clown had just taken http://nicwilliams.com Similarly, I wasn’t able to get nicwilliams@gmail.com when I created an account. My history online shows that ‘nicwilliams’ was my normal login name for sites I used pre-2006: rubyforge, skype, the old rails trac ticket system, etc. I was kind of committed to “Dr Nic” after I released a fun library “Dr Nic’s Magic Models” in 2006. Who puts their own name in a project title? I just felt the title “Magic Models” needed author attribution. Soon my other project’s were being called “Dr Nic’s XYZ” and at conferences no one knew who I was if I only introduced myself as “Nic Williams”.

It was a bit of fun when I was anonymous and it grew from there. Pretty lucky.

Why Ruby?

I’ve used languages that had metaprogramming facilities before, such as Python and Smalltalk, though Ruby was the first language and had the first community of users who valued and were motivated by “code aesthetics”. I like exploring “best looking API design” and “if I change this library, then my app code looks awesome” aspects of software design.

Ruby has also been a beacon to attract some great software developers who have created wonderful open source projects, such as rails, capistrano, cucumber, rspec, haml and more. So the ecosystem around Ruby makes the language itself more wonderful.

Git or SVN?

What a delightfully retro question. Perhaps the question could be “git vs hg vs darcs?” or similar. I use git, my toolset is built around git, including deployment to Heroku via git. I’m sure mercurial users have evolved to have a similar ecosystem. Our’s is very optimized around git. For example, I now maintain the ‘github’ command-line app, which let’s you search, clone and fork projects on Github. It is the ultimate tool for open source developers who use git and github.

What does your typical day look like?

The Mocra office opens at 7:30 and people wander home after 4:30. This gives us good overlap with clients in America and helps beat the morning traffic.

What do you do in your free time?

I’m married with two kids. I’ll ask my friends what “free time” means.

Current favorite apps?

I love apps that I can hack, configure, and rewire. TextMate’s “bundles” allow it to be customized to any new programming languages, frameworks or libraries that come along that it never knew existed. I’ve maintained or created a dozen of these, that’s how fun it is to customize your text editor.

The same thrill applies to FireFox and Chrome/Chromium and the ability to run extensions/greasemonkey scripts to modify other people’s sites.

What OS do you prefer?

I prefer OS X because it prefers me.

Small picture for your Workplace?

Favorite: Language (Ruby, Python ….), JS Framework?

I love Ruby. I know Ruby, I know it’s libraries, I know how to test it; so I get the benefit of experience now. But even when I knew very little I loved it. I’ve used Python, Smalltalk, Java, C, Objective-C, etc. Ruby and I think the same way.

For testing, I lean heavily on integration tests and less on unit testing. Currently we’re using cucumber with capybara (instead of webrat) as it seems to have nice JavaScript support for scenarios that need it.

For browser-side scripts with JavaScript, I prefer the jQuery library. I’ve only used PrototypeJS before it. I’ve written moderate JavaScript apps, blog badges and greasemonkey scripts, and I always like to start with jQuery.

For unit testing JavaScript, I still like Blue Ridge and did excitable talk on it in 2009 in London. I’m still looking though and hope the perfect, pre-packaged JavaScript testing environment for Rails apps and stand-alone JavaScript widgets comes along.

Name something that has inspired you recently?

I recently drove 14 days, 3000+km across Nepal and India in a tiny auto-rickshaw, without my armada of laptop, internet and distractions. The inspiration came when I realized “I need to do this more often!” I love coding, but I need to create more time to explicitly not code.

What are your personal projects and goals for 2010?

I don’t commonly have “personnal project goals” – the worst place a bug or fun idea can be is on my TODO list. I’ll often never get it it.

With Rails 3 coming into public existence, and all the community of dependent open source projects being upgraded, it is now time to upgrade the Rails TextMate bundle again. I started with a twitter account (@railstmbundle) to summarize changes and my thoughts. Before I get too excited I need a wholesale solution to supporting Rails 2 and Rails 3. We’ve never attempted this before; well, Rails has never changed so radically before.

For Mocra, we have a number of goals for the year. We’ll announcement when we achieve them!