02.15.06
My foray into the world of open source development
All I can say is wow.
When I came to Yahoo! to work on the platform team, I knew that the things I’d be building would be used by sites all over the Yahoo! network, and that kind of exposure was something that both excited me and scared me a little. I’ve built things for people to use before, but never to be consumed by an audience as large as Yahoo!’s.
When I started development on the Calendar component, I had no idea that we were moving in the direction of open-sourcing our platform library. The idea of giving back to the community in this way is something that is personally very satisfying to me, and I think that it will probably help me become a better developer as people begin implementing the things we’ve been working on, and making suggestions that will help us improve them.
It still feels a little strange to me to be able to blog so openly about what I’ve been working on for the few months I’ve been at Yahoo! and reading the incredibly positive feedback that we’ve received from various bloggers is a really exciting and validating experience.
I’m so proud to be working with a team of geniuses that consistently and easily solve complex client-side development problems like they’re nothing. I knew when I came to Yahoo! that I’d be around a lot of really smart folks, but I’m still amazed every day by the people sitting in the cubicles around me, and I would like to take a moment to thank them publicly for continually working so hard to see this vision through.
Those fabulous people are Eric Miraglia, Thomas Sha, Nate Koechley, Matt Sweeney, Adam Moore, Jenny Han, and Todd Kloots — and while their combined knowledge overwhelms me on a regular basis, I don’t think there’s a single day that I don’t learn something from these gurus. Thanks also to Bill Scott, the coolest evangelist since Tammy Faye (with much less makeup).
I’ve posted my first Calendar example here on the site, using the Connection and Event utilities, the Calendar component, and the flickr api. You can check it out here.
Here’s to lots more great stuff to come! 
Tags: ajax, calendar, css, flickr, javascript, web, web development, work, yahoo
