Chris Jaynes

I have built many JS apps, both the front-end and back end. On the front-end I started with Jquery, but I've also used Backbone, Spine, Knockout, React, CycleJS, Yolk, and other front-end frameworks.

I started building web-apps as soon as Gmail proved that front-end apps were real, and that client-side templating was the way of the future. I understand the box model thoroughly, and have done my best to keep up with CSS3 (although it still surprises me sometimes when new features appear!) I am proficient in Less, and have been using it for all of my sites for many years.

I reluctantly used Java for several years, but I got pretty good at it. Before I quit using it, I understood class-loaders, and could write multi-threaded server-side code. With that said, I am no fan of Java or classical inheritance.

I built a few apps with Winforms and ASP.Net back in the day, but most of my C# experience lately is in Unity. Although I'm not a big fan of classical inheritance, C# in Unity is pretty nice, because it uses an Entity/Component pattern, so the components feel a bit more functional and a bit less "classical". I still find myself wishing I had first-class functions and simple JS objects when I'm coding in C#, though.

Most of my SQL experience is in Microsoft SQL Server, with a bit of DB2 over the top. I can write a pretty decent query, and I know enough to not write terrible queries. I'm not a big fan of SQL databases. I have used CouchDB for most of my recent apps that are backed by a data store.

I built my first Node.js app for a Hackathon many years ago, and I was instantly hooked. I love the simplicity of Node. I was never a fan of the errorback pattern, so I'm glad to see promises making up for lost time and really improving a lot of the APIs out there. I have deployed a few live node apps over the last few years, some of which are still running today.

Like a lot of web developers, my first few front-end apps were basically bowls of Jquery soup. I eventually graduated to Javascript MVC, Backbone, and Spine, and now on to React and others, but I kind of miss Jquery. Lately I've been working on a prototype library that would allow Yolk/CycleJS-style binding of streams to DOM elements that uses Jquery.