cleverly
How being lazy makes you
a be2er developer.
Christian Heilmann – Web 2.0 Expo, Prague – October 2009

I am a developer evangelist.

h2p://developer‐evangelism.com/web.php

<dfn>cleverly lazy</dfn>
Lazy:
“I don’t want to do that.”
Cleverly lazy:
“I don't want to do that ever
again so I do it right this Eme.”

Lazily build products:
Do the job, but are impossible
to maintain.

Cleverly lazily build products:
Do the job, are easy to
understand, extend and are
built on a solid base.

Our job: evolving the web

To do this, we need to be free
to do new things.

Problem is that as developers,
we stand on our own way.

The biggest developer trap.
h"p://www.flickr.com/photos/snappa2006/3194326965/

The feature Simple
loop
Complex Feedback
Features

We don't develop the web ‐ we
fill it up with soluEons to the
same problem all of which are
half done.

This is my soluEon, and it is
be2er than anybody elses,
because...

Short a2enEon span.

Code wrecks are a security
issue!
h"p://www.flickr.com/photos/paleontour/2489523776/

Browsers suck!

Things you need to know as a
web developer:
★ The technologies involved
★ How browsers deal with these technologies and how
they fail to support them
★ Security concerns and a2ack vectors
★ Usability and accessibility of the product
★ InternaEonalisaEon of our products
★ Performance concerns
★ MulEple plaXorm support
★ Flexibility of the interface

Good
developers are
like librarians.
h2p://www.flickr.com/photos/feliciaday/3828388329/

A solid foundaEon.
h"p://www.flickr.com/photos/mangpages/2111892822/

Building with components.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/seven13avenue/2080281038/

A good debugging environment.
h"p://www.flickr.com/photos/anijdam/3587129389/

Planning for extension.
h"p://www.flickr.com/photos/anniemole/103641208/

Write documentaEon.
h"p://www.flickr.com/photos/tnarik/366393127/

h2p://developer.yahoo.com/yui/

h2p://developer.yahoo.com/ypa2erns

http://ui.jquery.com/
http://ui.jquery.com

h2p://developer.yahoo.com/yui/arEcles/skinning/

DocumentaEon.

h2p://developer.yahoo.com/yui/grids/builder/

h2p://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/

h2p://developer.yahoo.com/performance/

h2p://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

Using the web.
CMS

Using APIs.

The Yahoo Query Language, or
short YQL is a unified interface
language to the web.
h2p://developer.yahoo.com/yql/

select {what} from {source} where
{conditions} | {filters}

http://query.yahooapis.com/
v1/public/yql?q={query}
&format={format}

For example:
select * from geo.places where
text='london,uk'

Get only the where on earth ID
select woeid from geo.places
where text='london,uk'

Then mix:
select id from
flickr.photos.search where woe_id
in (select woeid from geo.places
where text='london,uk') and
license=4

Then mix:
select id from
flickr.photos.search where woe_id
in (select woeid from geo.places
where text='london,uk') and
license=4

And get all the info...
select * from flickr.photos.info
where photo_id in (select id from
flickr.photos.search where woe_id
in (select woeid from geo.places
where text='london,uk') and
license=4)

Display the results in a few lines...
http://isithackday.com/hacks/cantine/
index.php?loc=covent+garden
http://isithackday.com/hacks/ajaxexperience/flickrgeophotos.html

Or use already exisEng widgets
http://isithackday.com/hacks/cantine/
index.php?loc=covent+garden
h2p://isithackday.com/hacks/canEne/

h2p://isithackday.com/hacks/frankfurt

Learn YQL by doing
http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/

Any data will do...
atom
csv
feed
select * from html
json
microformats
rss
xml

Any data will do...
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~joy/fun/jokes/TV.html

http://isithackday.com/hacks/scraping-with-yql/

http://github.com/spullara/yql-tables/tree/master

Thanks!
Christian Heilmann
http://wait-till-i.com
http://developer-evangelism.com
http://twitter.com/codepo8
h2p://www.flickr.com/photos/mringlein/3463288828/