Jens Oliver Meiert - On Web Development: Articles 2005-2015

Copyright Jens Oliver Meiert. All rights reserved.
Written and published MMXV.
ISBN 978-0-9911480-1-1.

For all my professional superheroes, most notably Joe Clark, Ian Hickson, Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman, Edward Tufte, and Anne van Kesteren. Thank you.

Ive edited and written a number of books, andmost thankfullybooks are collaborative works. For this book I extend special thanks to Sarah M. Tyrrell, my fabulous editor, and Tony Ruscoe, friend and supporter through half a dozen years.

Many thanks also go to B.J. Fogg and the Persuasive Tech Lab team, a few good souls at Google, as well as Don Norman, Uche Ogbuji, Harry Roberts, and Steve Souders for allowing me to quote or otherwise use some of their materials.

And I thank the many, many, many people Ive worked with or read or otherwise felt inspired by, the many people who over the years influenced and guided my work. If theres use in what Ive done in the field of web development, then its for these very many people, not just the superheroes Im dedicating this book to, that now turn out to be too numerous to be mentioned.

Thank you.

I first became aware of Jens (the Web Developer) in late 2009, when a friend shared a few meiert.com blog posts. I paid particularly close attention while reading them, not only because they were smart and insightful, but because I was about to interview at Google for a Webmaster position on the same team as Jens. My interview was a success and I had the pleasure of working alongside him on several projects at Google.

Jenss expertise goes beyond just knowing how to write code. He inspires others to think about code and understand the importance of web development principles, coding style guidelines, quality, maintainability, accessibility, avoiding technical debt, and stopping to ask not how but rather why.

For all you web developers who havent had the privilege of working with Jens, and perhaps never will, the blog posts contained in this book are the next best thing available to you. Whether you agree or disagree with whats written, youll be a better web developer for just reading what Jens has to say. And maybe like me, when faced with a web development problem that needs solving, youll one day find yourself thinking

What would Jens do?

Tony Ruscoe

I wanted to be an astronautthat is the only career wish that I remember. I was seven years old at the time, eight perhaps, when I decided this. Later, just before I graduated in 1998, the German army, who at first so wanted me to join them (unfortunately not as an astronaut), sent a letter signing me out, which left me with no contingency plan. I wasted a few weeks just considering my freedom before a buddy of mine gave me an idea. He had gone through a two-year education program to become a technical assistant for computer science, basically a school curriculum preparing for tech jobs. I liked computers, I had a computer, and as for schoolhow bad could that be given that I had just gotten out of it?

Thus began my venture into computer science and, specifically, web development. I jobbed in a small agency in my chosen home town; after my certification I signed up at a company to move from web decorator, a term I coined a few years later, on to web designer. I coded more. My employer went bankrupt during the dot-com bubble and so I joined the next company, which also went bust. And then I moved and joined yet another firm, and moved once more, and then went back to an agency. By then, I had had enough and began to work freelance until a really big company knocked on my door. And yet I moved and moved and all that time worked and worked and worked, worked pro bono, and then worked some more.

Now, looking back at sixteen years of web development, working on my own and for others, for small and big companies, across three countries on two continents, writing two, three (maybe four with this one) technical books, having spoken at a few conferences, having been interviewed a number of times, doing x, y, and z, and somehow being named candidate for Web Developer of the Year (which puzzle-flatters me to this day) I think the work has overall shown merit. I like what Ive been doing, Ive always strived to deliver good work, and somehow things have panned out.

Now, saving string for my blogalways at meiert.com, what happened exactly, what repelled and impressed me precisely, and what Im taking away from this career are not the subjects of this book. The subject of this book is simply to make accessiblesuch an important keyword for the web developerthe most relevant posts, mostly unedited but briefly commented on, of the last 11 years. The book provides a more convenient route to Jenss web development thinking (whatever one may associate with this), for everyone who is interested in it. Think of this book as something simplean article compilation, or a publishing experimentnothing more. I cannot soberly judge my work.

Theres another mundane reason for this book, and then another important one, and they are intertwined. The important reason to publish it, for me, is to provide me some sort of closure as I dip a few toes into a new career. As Ive said ever since 100 Things I Learned as an Everyday Adventurer, I believe people have multiple talents. And besides maintaining my appetite for adventure, Ive been working hard on growing a strong foundation to move into philosophy and politics. That mundane reason I referenced is that Im now taking some risks and trying to make a good part of my living out of writing and speaking.

Will I move out of the field, out of tech, then? Not entirely. I prefer to leave the subject open here and comment about it on my site, but in brief, no. Web development has become a part of me; I know much about the industry, and I want to stay close. Ill need the skills I acquired for my future work, since websites are going to be a part of our lives for a long time and there are projects and companies that still excite me. So therell always be some Jens and web development.

It follows, finally, an account of the past Jens, on web development. Please note that it does show at times that Im not a native English speakerespecially in what I wrote before I joined Google and moved to the United States. Note that I can be quite provocative, mostly to bring a point across and not so much to insist on just my own view. Note also that not everything that follows is correct, nor that it is perfect. And then, blaming others, not all will display beautifully. While Ive paid special attention to flexible formatting, not every graphic or code snippet may work well everywhere. (Links, by the way, have been kept, because this e-book may certainly be read on web-capable devices.)

Still, most items should not only display right, but also be correct. Or perfect. The idea behind many of my posts, and this book, is to share, plant, introduce, grow, and promote concepts, approaches, and ideas of where we as web specialists could go. And so Im convinced, selfishly, that in addition to the ample Jens to be found in here, there is much that is, hopefully, of use to the modern web developer, as well as to the next, more modern ones. And again, I cannot judge my work. Heres just hoping that what Ive written, what has happened so far on meiert.com over all the years, is of some value when published in book format.

Please enjoy.

Jens Oliver Meiert

Original release: November 25, 2008
Address: meiert.com/en/blog/20081125/wdr-2/