Patrick Cooper doesn't know Javascript
That's half of the quote. "Patrick Cooper doesn't know Javascript, but he's doing it" is the full quote, from a good colleague. And that's damn right. We pushed the first code I've done for the site live today, and it didn't break the site. All seven of the affected files went out fine. The code worked on all the pages it touched, which was most of them, and the tweaks to come appeared minimal. I blogged the changes here.
No one at work outside my little team knows I did the code, and they don't need to. My manager knows, and I can stick it on my review next fall. What matters is I know how long I read what was already there, stared and got it wrong until it made sense, got it wrong and kept at it until it worked, and came up after the few days spread over a couple weeks ready to clearly explain, defend and tout what had changed.
The touting is happening now. Forgive me for now if you can. It's not because the code was hard. In a developer's world, today's additions aren't very complex. And it's not because I stayed up all times of night and locked myself away to get it just right. In the last few weeks, I've been running, flying across the country and chasing futilely after a girl. Patrick Cooper doesn't know Javascript, but he's so damn doing it.
March 24th, 2009 at 7:52 AM
[...] a Clark Kent action figure on his desk, but I just cannot given him the Superman mantle, even if he programs in javascript. I don't like Supes. Patrick calls himself “militantly left-handed,†but you don't [...]