Archive for July, 2005
I lost it. Damn. It took me a full 0.5 microseconds to realize it was gone. As if it had evaporated in plain sight. I should have known it would happen one day, but I didn’t. And now the pain is unbearable.
It happened in the new high-speed train between Amsterdam and Paris. I had been visiting some relatives back in Holland and was now on my way home. Home, for me, is a small apartment in a large building near a now tiny Eiffel tower. I remember the days when the Eiffel tower seemed to rise above the city, a magnificent display of French pride. Unfortunately those days have been lost.
No, today’s world is different. It’s a world driven by technology, and cost-effectiveness. But yet it’s a world with magic, a world where the unexplainable still happens. Like it did today.
When I entered the train I could feel the magic. I was listening, intently, and looking around, somewhat foolishly. There was a girl at the other end of the cabin, staring straight ahead, not distracted by my entrance, as if she was both deaf and blind. I studied her for a while, fascinated by her silent composure. As the train started to move, I sat down. An old song protruded my mind. A manifest, by some long gone Canadian band. It seemed fitting.
And then, nothing. Poof, the music had disappeared. Slightly startled I searched my bag, thinking that’s where I had put it. Nothing there. I patted my jacket, not there either. It had disappeared, along with the music. And as I looked up, I noticed the cabin was empty.
The girl had disappeared as well.
Dear DSTF,
I applaud your effort to bring JavaScript into a better light, and teach people how to write scripts following best practices. However, I am worried that your focus on unobtrusiveness and best practices will result in less attention for code quality.
A recent example of this is your post about Image Previews. While the script you link to is certainly unobtrusive, I don’t think it’s a good example of code quality, or for that matter, DOM scripting.
I won’t complain about the coding style of the JavaScript, that’s entirely personal. (Although some more whitespace can’t hurt.) No, one of the problems is that the script, written by one of your members, even, does not use DOM events. For a script linked to from your weblog I find that disturbing. Another, and perhaps worse, issue is that the script leaks memory.
Things like memory leakage can be hard to grasp, but it’s fundamental that DOM scripters understand these problems and work around them. Promoting a script which does not use DOM events is giving the wrong example. By all means, link to a great unobtrusive script, but in that same post also point out what could be improved. Please check the code quality of the scripts you link to: people will try to learn from the code and it’s important they learn it correctly.
If all goes well, you’ll be a huge influence to many new developers. Let’s get the max out of that influence.
Kind regards,
- Mark Wubben
P.S. I realized during writing this letter that the script in question was written by and about by Christian Heilmann, one of your members. Please understand that this post is not meant as an attack on Christian, but as an expression of my worries. Again, I applaud you for your efforts.
I lost it. Damn. It took me a full 0.5 microseconds to realize it was gone. As if it had evaporated in plain sight. I should have known it would happen one day, but I didn’t. And now the pain is unbearable.
It was a freezing cold winter day when it came to me. I was huddled inside, close to a warming fire, when suddenly there was a loud knock on the door. Startled I got up, a feeling of dread in my stomach. Not sure what to expect, I grabbed the fire poker. Another loud knock seemed to vibrate the room. With the poker firmly gripped I went to the door, and opened it slowly. There was nothing.
Suddenly angered at my fear I threw open the door and raced out. I could see footsteps in the snow, the distance between them indicating the person, or thing, had run off. Suddenly the cold caught me and I retreated, shivering, inside; bolting the door behind me. As I sat down at the fireplace I realized I was still clenching the poker. I got up to put it back and as I got up, I saw something from the corner of my eye. Something wrapped in gift paper, put inside the house while I was hunting my ghost. What reason there was to lure me out, only in order to present me a gift I did not know. But as I approached the gift, as I moved my hands to open it, I could feel the feelings of fear dissolving. It was a marvellous gift, odd, yet fantastic. A real piece of Art.
That is how it came to me, and it’s been with me ever since.
And now it’s gone.
Time to get NEWD? Hah, we Dutch can do better: 2005july24! Sign up and we’ll see you there!
And yeah, we need a name, but we are working on it!
One year ago exactly I was in London, hanging out with Eddie Sowden and two of his friends. Now today happened and some stations I passed through that day, one year ago, have been hit.
My thoughts are with the victims and their friends and family. Be strong, and don’t let them scare you.
Something I haven’t written about here is that DHTML Utopia contains my Event Cache technique. I still need to get my hands on a copy, but that’s pretty damn cool!
Also, yesterday evening I officially graduated from high school. Another book closed. The evening was quite fun, my dad took some pictures, I might put them on Flickr. Anne graduated as well, congrats man!
And finally, the subject I talked about earlier will have to be picked up later, due to the complexity of prediciting how fast institutions will handle subscriptions. More about that soon, I hope.
