Thoughts on web development, tech, and life.

Day: July 25, 2007

High-Performance JavaScript (OSCON 2007)

High-Performance JavaScript: Why Everything You’ve Been Taught is Wrong
O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) 2007
Portland, OR
July 25, 2007

Download PPT (7.3MB)

This talk describes many of the counterintuitive lessons we learned at Plaxo while building Plaxo Online 3.0 and trying to make it fast. 

In addition to sharing technical tricks and gotchas, I try to talk at a higher level about how to approach building fast web apps and how to change your normal assumptions as an engineer or designer when working inside a web browser. When I first practiced giving this talk, it took me about an hour, so I had to cut it down quite a bit. If you’re hungry for more, you can check out the “director’s cut” with all the extra slides still in. 🙂

This is my second year it OSCON, and like last year I am really impressed by the quality and the attitude of the people here. Hearing smart people talk passionately about topics they’re experts in is inspiring to me, even–or perhaps especially–when I don’t know much about the topic. It’s also nice to catch up with friends and colleagues (many of whom actually live in the bay area, but somehow we only meet up at events like OSCON!)

Congrats to David Recordon!

David Record receives an Open Source Award at OSCONYesterday morning, I watched David Recordon lead an “OpenID Bootcamp” for OSCON attendees (including a handout for everyone of the implementation guide I wrote, wow!). Then last night he received a Google – O’Reilly Open Source Award for his contributions to the development and spread of OpenID. What a day!

David has been a great friend and mentor to me throughout my involvement with OpenID. Even when he was traveling all around the world (which he does a lot for his job), he always made time to help answer questions and debug issues (including once over Google Talk from an international airport while his flight was being boarded!)

I’m sure I’m not the only one he’s been so helpful to, and his passion and positive attitude was clearly not lost on Google and O’Reilly. Congrats David, your recognition is much deserved. And viva OpenID!!

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