Dave Methvin

Dave is President of the jQuery Foundation and lead developer on jQuery Core, used by 60 percent of the top 100,000 sites on the Internet according tobuiltwith.com.

10 questions for Dave Methvin:

• What did you do before becoming a designer/developer?

  I got a degree in Computer Science and did some development after graduation, but spent about a decade as a journalist in the computer industry. Then I went back into software development.

• Which developers do you follow or are an inspiration to you?

  Definitely have to go with John Resig here, he created jQuery and made it fun for me to do web development. The thing about John is that he is really good at finding problems that need to be solved and finds pragmatic solutions.

• Which programming languages do you use on a daily basis?

  It's JavaScript just about full time for me, and I don't mind. Occasionally I do some shell scripting, PHP, or C#.

• Who do you side with: Team Mac or Team PC?

  I'm a PC guy from way back. Just about everyone I work with uses a Mac, so I guess that now makes me the one to Think Different.

• Do you usually go to conferences? Which ones do you prefer?

  I work from home, so conferences are an opportunity to get out, meet people, and learn something new. I go to a lot of jQuery conferences all over the world, it's amazing to see what people are doing now with it and with web development in general. A good conference is a balance between educational and aspirational.

• Which technologies are you excited about?

  I'm looking forward to all the standards that will let web pages and apps take over more of the things that native apps currently do. Technologies like WebRTC should help there. In the longer term I think Web Components have a lot of promise.

• How many hours do you work each week?

  Probably around 50 or 60, but it doesn't feel like work. I just carry my notebook around the house. Mostly I do things like answer emails (or do this interview!) in the evenings. I probably do my best thinking during dog walks though.

• Do you listen to music while you work? Describe your playlist.

  Lately, I've been listening to more music because I got a nice set of headphones for Christmas. Mostly it's classic rock from the 70s and 80s.

• Which books would you recommend as a must-read?

  On the programming side I'd say, "JavaScript the Good Parts" by Crockford and "Code Complete" by McConnell. For its awesome graphical representations of data, I love "Envisioning Information" by Tufte.

• What is your favorite sport?

  To watch? American Football. To play? Frisbee.