YUI Benchmark is a new toolkit for JavaScript performance testing. Despite “YUI” being in the name, it can be used for any type of JavaScript application, including vanilla JS, YUI, Dojo, jQuery, Node.js, and anything else you can think of. The project was something I was working on at Yahoo to help with YUI’s CI performance testing needs, and since its quiet open-sourcing a few weeks ago, I’ve had some time to clean it up, fix bugs, and introduce some new functionality.

Before we get into what it is, let’s first look at why it is useful.

A week ago I walked out of Building E for the last time. There are a lot of emotions as I reflect back on everything that has happened over the last 4 years since I joined, the jubilant successes, the lesson-learning failures, and everything in between. I have to think that in the end, it will likely go down as one of the more fun and rewarding periods of my life.

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If there’s one thing we’ve learned in 20+ years of building Web sites, it’s that performance matters. Browsers need to fetch, parse, and render pages quicker. JavaScript needs to execute faster, HTTP servers need to generate and serve content more efficiently, and caching layers need to be more pervasive. All in effort to make the browsing experience more enjoyable for the user so they browse, click, engage, and buy more. The effect performance has on the bottom-line has been very well documented over the years, and the interest in “fast” is doing anything but slowing down.

Every time Twitter announces some new API initiative that further damages their once great developer community, I always think, “Alright, this is the last time I’ll write about them. I’m done.” But every time, they always find a way to pull me back into the discussion.

I spent a few days last week in New York City at Yahoo’s Open Hack All-stars event. At this hack day, I was mentoring a team of 3 students from the University of Texas who set out to create a hack that allows you to control a media experience on your TV by using your iPad.

So you want to learn JavaScript huh? I can’t blame you, it’s a pretty rad programming language. Well lucky for you, it’s a really easy language to pick up and learn. You can get started with the language without spending a penny on a compiler, an IDE, or any instructional material. Heck, you already have a computer capable of running JavaScript. I know that because every modern web browser has one, and that’s how you are viewing this blog post.

For years, the phrase “IE6 Must Die” has been used as the rally cry for web developers who want to put IE6 in the rear-view mirror. As a seasoned web developer, I’ve certainly had much share of frustrations with that browser. We all have. It’s just old and lacking in so many neat, useful, heck… vital features for modern web applications. We can all agree that it’s a royal pain in the ass and it is holding the web back. Right? Wrong.

The Huffington Post just posted an interview with Marissa Mayer (“Google Exec Marissa Mayer Explains Why There Aren’t More Girl Geeks”) in which she explained why she chose Google over 13 other companies she had job offers from out of college.

Growing up in Kansas City, I spent quite a few summer afternoons at Royals games. My grandparents had season tickets, front row, just next to the home dugout. Amazing seats. It pretty much felt like you were on the field. As much as I love some of my other teams, there’s a certain connection you have with your baseball team. I suspect that is largely due to the fact that they play just about every night, 162 games per season. If you are a fan, you are in it for the long-haul. It takes commitment.

6 years and 6 months ago I was a recent college grad, unemployed, and recently fired from my computer sales job. I was horrible at sales. Not because I’m not social and can’t communicate, but because I always viewed myself as being on the side of the customer, not the employer. “No, you don’t need that, it’s twice as expensive as this model, and you won’t use most of the features. Here, this one is a better fit for you. Actually, you probably don’t even need this at all.“

It seems like just yesterday I accepted a position with Yahoo and began a new adventure. These last 18 months have been an incredibly exciting time in my life, and am very thankful to have been given the opportunity. I can confidently say that Yahoo is -the- best place to work as a front-end engineer.

According to Wikipedia, Engineering is…

“…the discipline, art and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize solutions to the needs of society.”

When I have conversations with people about what excites me in technology today, I usually start with the fact that the Web is breaking down barriers in a way we’ve never experienced before. It is simply amazing that anyone is free to publish anything they want whenever they want, and is it instantly available for global consumption.

So Twitter is once again in some hot water with their developer community. After a well-intentioned, but poorly executed suggestion to their developer community that they stop working on developing clients and instead work on “vertical” ideas, the feedback they’ve received has been less than ideal. You can read the original post at “consistency and ecosystem opportunities“, and some of the media coverage here, here, and here.

Now that webOS 2.0 ships with Node.js, one of the first things I tried to do when I got the webOS 2.0 SDK a while back was get npm installed. While successful, it took a little bit of work, so figured it was worth a post to help aid anyone else trying to get it installed. For those that aren’t familiar with npm, it is a package manager for Node.js (Node Package Manager).

Since I came across Paul Buccheit’s “Serendipity Finds You“ blog post yesterday, it has been difficult to stop thinking about it. It’s a great read, so definitely go check it out. Go ahead, I’ll wait. While you are at it, read through the Hacker News comments on the article, they are just as enlightening as the article itself.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could use OAuth in JavaScript-only apps? JS is a powerful, expressive programming language, and the browser engines are getting faster and faster all the time. Why not use JavaScript to conduct your API calls and parse your data? In many cases, it is unnecessary to maintain a server-side proxy if all it is doing is making API calls for you and hiding your OAuth keys.

I was digging through some old email today and came across a post I made to jquery-en@googlegroups.com back in 2007.

On a side note, as I mentioned, I’m new to jQuery. In fact, my jQuery expertise goes back a full 24 hours. The website I’m coding now did use prototype and scriptaculous, but once I looked at the 1.2 version of jQuery, I knew I’d found a better solution (for me, anyways). So I spent the rest of the day recoding the site for jQuery. It was this post that convinced me I needed to change, “Why jQuery’s Philosophy is Better“

In the post, Yehuda Katz compares a relatively young jQuery to Prototype.js. Rewinding back to 2007, I was a Prototype user and it was apparently that post that sold me on jQuery being a better library. For the next 2 years I was a (mostly) happy jQuery user.

When I saw on NCZ’s blog that he was writing a new book on JavaScript performance techniques, I instantly went to pre-order it. Having partially read through High Performance JavaScript by now, I figured I’d start writing a review of this excellent book.

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.