So right now I’m sitting in a booth on the Yahoo! campus, the same booth where I set a goal 20 months ago that one day I’d work for Yahoo! and….

[Wavy distorted omg we're going into a flashback. Begin narration]

My first experience on the Yahoo campus was for Y! HackDay 2008. I remember coming to the campus, being totally lost, and overwhelmed, almost like your first day of High School or College. I wasn’t an employee or anything. I was just a dumb programmer who wanted a taste of what Silicon Valley was really like. Seriously, I come from the startup world in Kansas City, I was in absolute awe of the place. This is where the Internet happens. Holy shit.

I came to HackDay armed with an idea for a hack to build, but was totally unable to focus, so I just sat around, tweeting, talking, and having fun. The music, the hacks, the food, the beer. I was totally awestruck when I talked to someone who worked at Yahoo!, especially the ones working on products I had used. I knew at that moment this was a place I’d always strive to work at. I knew I just *had* to work here, and be the person on the other end of that conversation.

Through the course of that weekend, I met a recruiter who for one reason or another took interest in my skills and said he’d follow up with me. I didn’t expect he would and he was just being nice. A couple weeks later I got a call from him stating he was interested in setting up an interview. I was shocked. “Ok, yeah, umm.. sure, anytime” I was so nervous before that first call. I reviewed just about every book I owned on programming, and I own a lot. I got the call and was speaking with an engineering manager who started asking me all sorts of questions about web development. In retrospect, I totally bombed it, and knew it. Rejected.

Down, but not out, I was focused, I knew it was attainable, but I just needed more time. So, over the next year I did just about everything I could to get my skills up to the level they needed to be for another crack at an interview, always keeping that original interview experience in mind. I had a blueprint. A plan.

A year later I got an email… “I’m back at Yahoo! Want another interview?” It was the original recruiter. “Yeah, absolutely.” The only goal I had this time was getting further than the first. I wouldn’t be totally bummed out if I didn’t get the job, but I at least wanted an on-site interview, just as validation I was making progress. Off I went, studying my ass off for about a week straight, so focused on the lone objective of nailing that phone-screen. The phone rang, and we started chatting. These questions were totally different from the first time. But that’s ok, I knew them. Apparently I did well, and I got an on-site.

The on-site (at the Santa Monica office) went well, and I got an offer. It was a big step leaving Kansas City, but one that I’d always regret if I stayed. So off I went, off to sunny SoCal. I started at the Santa Monica office working with the Entertainment team in November. Due to some mix-ups, I never did make it up here to Sunnyvale for training & orientation. Beyond that, there was never much need for me to be up here in person as we have tele-conferencing equipment galore, and these virtual meetings are in our DNA because we have offices around the country, and around the world.

So 5 months go by and I finally get up here for my first time. I’m actually glad I didn’t get up here before. I get to experience my first day at Yahoo, twice. I knew it was going to be weird, a good weird, and I knew that first time I came here was going to start flashing back. So here I am, sitting in the same booth, sipping my (free) mocha cappucino, admiring the courtyard, the weather, and the conversations going on around me. This is awesome. I have somewhere to be right now. But, nope…

If you haven’t set goals for yourself, do it. Set big ones. Set life-changing ones. When you achieve those, set higher ones, and just keep rolling. If you don’t have goals, find them. I stumbled across this one because I saw a tweet about HackDay, thought it sounded fun, and stepped on a plane to fly out here almost 2 years ago. Random. Lucky… Bold.

It’s feelings like this that you wish you could just bottle up and relive whenever you want.

So, I guess that’s the reason I’m writing this. A 30 minute slice of awesomeness, carved into this blog.

I just finished watching Part 1 of Douglas Crockford’s ongoing lecture series on JavaScript, and it’s fascinating stuff. A must watch for any programmer. Even if you don’t code in JS, it’s worth watching simply because this first part is all about the history of programming. (video of talk is below)

As web developers, we spend anywhere from a little bit of our time to the majority of it coding in JavaScript, but few know the history behind the language. I’m not talking about just reading the Wikipedia article and knowing that it was created by Brenden Eich at Netscape in ’95, I’m talking about the history of where the ideas behind the language came from and everything that influenced it. Like most every language, JavaScript’s syntax and style didn’t appear out of nowhere, it was influenced by a number of different languages, and those influencers were in turn also influenced by a slew of languages.

It’s easy for those of us that started programming with C (or anything after) to just look at it as the “Alpha” language and ignore everything that happened before it, but that’s missing a lot of really important history, that we, as professionals, should know. It’s like a politician in the United States just ignoring everything that happened before 1776. Learn from the mistakes of the past and spot the trends going forward and pave the best path. Crockford shows us snippets of languages that were created in the 60′s and 70′, dissects them, and explains why certain people thought they were good ideas at the time. It’s amazing to think that there was a time before modules or functions, or before we had figured out the best way to format a for loop. The history of programming languages is littered with a ton of bad ideas, but occasional brilliant ideas. Those brilliant ideas are what get refined, and lay the foundation in the next generation of languages.

Finally, one concept he goes back to over and over that I found really interesting is that programmers are a very stubborn breed. We all know this. There’s little point to all our flame wars on which language or framework is better, and most of it comes from either insecurity or ignorance. He says it takes a long time for us to evolve, and he’s right. It’s not because new ideas aren’t coming along all the time, but it’s because the adoption of new ideas only take place at each generation shift, when the “old” thinkers get replaced those with few preconceived notions. The world didn’t wake up one day and realize that GOTO statements were bad, it’s that those who supported GOTO and argued for it for a decade finally retired. Out with the old, in with the new. That’s evolution.

Anyways, I could go on and on about all the “Ah hah!” moments in this talk, but you really need to watch it for yourself. I’ll probably chime in again after part 2, which I’m probably going to watch right now. I’m excited. It’s like a sequel. “Ooo! What happens now?!”

Also, here’s the “Mother of all Demos” video he mentions about halfway through.

analyzed what would finally kill the iPod, and the requirements I said needed to exist on this mythical device was:

• Media player
• Good quality video camera
• Large amount of storage space
• Doubles as a cell-phone
• Easy access to a store to get new media (free and purchase)
• Always-on broadband internet access
• Allows access to media sharing services like Flickr and YouTube
• Exchange integration with “Push” email
• Access to GMail, Hotmail, and Yahoo accounts
• Has to be “cool” and easy to use

And my prediction for who it would be?  Microsoft + Yahoo.  Oh man was I wrong. C’mon, Microsoft had the most feature rich mobile OS at the time, they had to be the top contender, right?  Not even close.  Windows Mobile is pretty much exactly the same as it was back then, and they really missed the boat.  I didn’t even figure Google into the equation, and they stand a much better chance to beat out Microsoft with Android.

Well, it looks like the iPod has finally been replaced by its cousin, the iPhone.  I just finished watching the Apple SDK announcement presentation and it’s very clear that it is going to be a revolutionary platform for mobile devices.  Don’t believe that?  Venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins will disagree with you too.

It’s just a reminder that you have to innovate to stay on top.  Nice work Apple.