Another day, another “intermoo”. I really wanted to get Justin Bieber to comment on MooTools today but seeing as he refused to commit to answering my questions, I got the next best thing: the chance to ketchup[1] with Christoph Pojer from the MooTools core team.
When you meet with Chris, there’s something endearing about him, and it’s not just the way he says ‘mutuulz’ (you can watch this talk on mootools Chris gave earlier this year and see what I mean). We try to find out what drives him on today.
A little bit about yourself, your background…
I am 21 years old and I live in the wonderful city of Graz in Austria. I am a student of Software Engineering and Business Administration at the Graz University of Technology. I would define myself as (Mobile) Web (Application) Developer and I am active on the Internet for as long as I have a connection – that’s about ten years now!
How and when did you get involved with MooTools?
When I started with web development I started using JavaScript. I didn’t learn the language at first but when JavaScript and XHR got more widespread adoption later in 2005 I started building my own little animation library. Shortly after I found moo.fx and I became a frequent reader of the mad4milk blog – the place where “moo.dom” and “moo.ajax” were released which eventually lead to MooTools. I was a MooTools user since the famous 0.87 version and I remember bugging Valerio to include “DOMReady” back in the days. I stuck around and got to know the core developers but only a few years later I started to actively contribute and eventually I became a member of the Core Development Team.
Why MooTools, what makes it special?
The module that got me using MooTools was Class.js. Back in the days we didn’t even have inheritance or mixins but given that I was unaware of the prototype-based nature of JavaScript, Class made me feel like home. Ever since, I love how MooTools works, the abstractions and the clean code, just great. However, at the moment, the most important part about it is our community. I actually got to know and got to meet a lot of the MooTools developers and they have all become great friends.
What are you working on at the moment (on the framework itself, related or otherwise)?
Right now I am doing lots of probability theory, object oriented analysis, data structures and algorithms, software architecture and information security related stuff. That, of course, doesn’t have anything to do with MooTools but during the semester I don’t have time for anything else really. But fear not, in the web assignments I am of course making use of MooTools (and PowerTools! 😉 ). Recently I did some experiments with DeviceOrientation and DeviceMotion on iOS 4.2 (see
http://twitter.com/#!/cpojer/status/7485711225716736).
Are there any other Open Source technologies or projects you are involved with?
You can usually find me doing work around the JavaScript eco-system. Therefore I am involved in a number of minor projects, nothing similar to MooTools. I am involved with GitHub. It makes the development experience so much better and more fun – it is easy to contribute to almost anything.
You have recently done some amazing work on the MooTools PowerTools! which help a fair bit in making the framework portable on all handheld devices. Do you see the role of internet phones grow and the need for proper portable javascript support to go with it? Are there plans to port some of your work into the MooTools core or more?
The goal of PowerTools! is not to make MooTools mobile compliant – MooTools works great on mobile devices already. One part of PowerTools! is the mootools-mobile project, which brings custom gestures and more for your mobile web app. PowerTools! is about providing low-level MooTools extensions or HTML5 related plugins that help you speed up the development process or to make your code more maintainable. As far as mobile is concerned, yes – mobile browsers have a lot of catching up to do, but we will get there. The mobile web is definitely important. PowerTools! is currently standalone and there are no plans to officially include it with MooTools. I don’t want to bloat our beloved library 😉
Would you share your thoughts on what the future holds in terms of HTML5, CSS3, V8, next gen browsers, server-side javascript, the role of frameworks and MooTools in web application development?
Oh well, there are a lot of buzz-words in there. I honestly have no idea, unless you have time to read five different scenarios on how the future might turn out? Haha, I thought so. Seriously speaking, it’s difficult to say. I think its reasonable to say that the amount of abstractions will increase and a lot of things will get easier even though under the hood they become much more complex. It’s just the beginning. And also, it’s just JavaScript.
If time and resources were not an issue, what new features or changes would you like to see most come into the framework or the website?
MooTools 2.0 of course! The whole thing will blow your mind, once its done of course 😛
If you had not been involved in MooTools, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
Well, that would mean I would not be involved with anything related to the Web. I’d probably just go for a BA masters, but that would be the most boring thing… In any case, without MooTools my life would be very different, not nearly as awesome as it is right now and I wouldn’t have made so many great friends – I am really grateful. Also, the word “Ping!” would not make me laugh, Djamil wouldn’t be a funny person and ketchup would just be ketchup.
**editor** [1] to fully appreciate what he’s saying, you really have to see the MooTools core team eat burgers, chips and ketchup, or rather, have some food with their ketchup. Failing that, you can always login to IRC and “ping” cpojer, he loves it!
MooTools is now officially the 2nd largest framework / library out there, how do you think it will grow from here?
The numbers vary, I am not so sure about their correctness. MooTools is being used a lot behind the scenes – in huge internal applications. That is where I see MooTools. If you want to do serious web applications, MooTools is the obvious choice. Given that we are moving to a “Web of Apps”, MooTools has a good starting place. Let’s see where the journey will go.
If you could give one tip to new MooTools / javascript developers, what would it be?
What I have found is that most Web Developers still do not have an idea of what they are really doing. My advice is to learn the core concepts, learn about how the Web works, learn about object oriented languages, learn JavaScript. If you know the basics it only gets easier and a whole new world opens up every time you learn something new. MooTools can help you hide the complexity behind JavaScript and makes it easier to get started. Also, don’t be afraid to ask questions. It is what I do all the time when I want to learn something. Join the #mootools IRC channel on Freenode and ping me (cpojer), I’m happy to help!
Your favourite MooTools website:
I don’t usually have one. If you want to learn MooTools then go to David Walsh’s (FTW) website
http://davidwalsh.name/ – also, the site is awesome for using the hover-effect on links which I created 🙂 Some people claim David stole them, I refuse to believe that.
Your top 5 resources for web developers (can be websites like jsFiddle, IDEs, tutorials, CSS frameworks like boilerplate, etc)
GitHub. MooTools.net. PowerTools!. NetBeans. Chrome Web Inspector.
Thank you for your time!
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by MooTools, lost_codepage and Jonathan Krause, Dimitar Christoff. Dimitar Christoff said: Finally got #mootools core member Christoph @cpojer Pojer to answer a few questions, here's the next "intermoo" series http://bit.ly/ewIewG […]
[…] 比較的に最近開発メンバーに加わった一人です。 Intermoos series, part 3: “ketching up” with Christoph Pojerによると、まだ学生です。 […]