Blogs

Hello Ajax inspired blogosphere. My name is Brian and I’m the new guy here. After months of scrubbing toilets, running laps, eating only whole grained oats and sleeping with Enterprise Ajax clutched in my hands in a small hallway closet, I’ve crawled my way to publicly recognizable face of Nitobi.

My role here is focused on systems architecture, application development and, when it makes sense, integration of Nitobi components. I come from a background in developing large scale business intelligence systems with compiled languages but in the past year I’ve changed, quite a bit. I was tired of classic software engineering and rather disenchanted with the whole “code-compile-test” cycle. User experience and business value weren’t being given the right amount of attention while tools and arbitrary vendor process was. I decided to strike out on my own. Like a lone gunslinger, I wandered the chaotic plains of consultancy, eating only what I killed and sometimes dollar pizza. I switched out platforms and tools to a completely open source development approach and found peace. I was delivering consistent, high quality, rapid return applications and involved in the software community again. I didn’t think things could get any better.

Then Andre and Dave came to me with an idea.

A really good one, and much better, a team of skilled ninja the likes of which hasn’t been seen since feudal Japan in the 14th century. These ninja don’t use nunchaku to kick ass. They use rich client technologies like JavaScript, ActionScript and sometimes Beer. The Nitobi ninja are mysterious but not lazy. Not when I’m blogging anyhow. They’ve created a professional suite of Ajax components with a small team of passionate developers. But this isn’t just a typical ISV hawking components and disappearing after they have your money. Every single developer here is involved in supporting their customers.

Nitobi doesn’t sell shelfware and doesn’t want to.

Rightfully, there is an understanding here that the whole life cycle of software development is part of the experience and building better user interfaces isn’t just about components. Its about giving fellow developers an edge and making all of our lives easier. Integrating theCompleteUI suite with real world systems is a priority here, be it: Java, .NET, ColdFusion, PHP or Ruby. Developers want clean solutions, with the source, that pays attention to standards, an understanding that there will be abackend system and, most importantly, Developers want to get things done. Most developers simply do not have the bandwidth to be screwing around with that last pixel. I’ve heard every single person in here on the phone with a customer getting things working on every kind of software system implementation imaginable. That’s what its all about.

Suffice to say, I am honored to be joining this team.

My background is in compiled languages and runtimes but I drank the coolaide and, after I came down, I started programming web applications on Rails. As a neat side effect I get to program in Ruby, something that Nitobi is doing more and more of, and I only expect to see grow. I’m sure I’ll be helping out with the components side of the equation but my role will be more involved in developing custom applications that leverage the Nitobi CompleteUI and the crazy user interface ninjitsu this company has grown a reputation for being the best at.

Stay tuned, much more to come.