Jonathan Mills is Director of Research and Development at Paige Technologies in Overland Park, Kansas. He will be giving a workshop at AIM HDC on AngularJS and a presentation on Node.js. SPN spoke with Mills over the phone.
SPN: Tell us a bit about Paige Technologies and what you do there.
JM: I work in a division called Paige Labs. Paige Technologies is essentially an IT staffing company, and Paige Labs works with our clients on technology and mentoring, identifying which emerging technologies would work for them. We either mentor them at the management level or work with them side by side to get them up to speed with whatever technology they decide to go with.
SPN: What’s your biggest recommendation to companies right now?
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JM: My biggest recommendation is that if you don’t know JavaScript, you need to know JavaScript. JavaScript is kind of taking over everything. Whether it’s JavaScript code on the front end to Node.js becoming huge for server-side–and if you have seen the new cross-platform Visual Studio from Microsoft, that’s a desktop application written in JavaScript using a tool called Electron. All these people who have avoided JavaScript (and I was one of them) need to really go with it.
SPN: We hear a lot about the popularity of Angular lately. Why do you think it’s become so popular?
JM: Angular is Google’s version of a JavaScript framework, kind of like React out of Facebook and several others. Because it had that Google name stamped on it, it kind of gave it some instant credibility in the market.
But it’s also one of the few JS frameworks out there that is truly a holistic framework. React is just your view. jQuery helps you do a couple things here or there. Angular is a holistic framework that allows you to do just about everything you need to do. I think that makes it a whole lot easier for someone who’s just trying to get into JavaScript.
SPN: The title of one of your presentations is “Build a Restful API with Node.js and Express” What do you mean by “restful”?
JM: The term “REST” comes from a dissertation done by a guy named Roy Fielding. The idea is about building an API based on a certain set of criteria. It’s a clearly defined way to write an API. It takes all the guesswork out of it.
SPN: How do you evaluate the impact APIs have made in the development world?
JM: They’re everywhere, right? APIs are the way things talk to each other. If I want to pull Facebook data, or Twitter data, or I want to use weather data–APIs make it easy to interface with public-facing data. You name it, there’s an API that can do it. The most common is social media, but there’s APIs for libraries and books, too. It’s very cool to have a standard that’s takes a lot of the hard work out of it for me.
SPN: What do you think the challenge is with APIs?
JM: The biggest challenge is [having] well-documented APIs. We talked about REST and REST being a standard, but standards are only useful if they are enforced. The challenge when you’re writing an API is writing in a way that is consumable. The challenge when you’re reading an API is making sure you understand their particular implementation.
SPN: Who do you think is the best audience for your talks this year?
JM: I’m giving two talks at HDC this year. The first is a workshop on getting started with Angular. If you’re interested in Angular but you haven’t really done anything yet, those are the people for this talk. It’s a 4-hour workshop, so you’ll walk out of there with a pretty clear understanding of Angular and how that works.
The other talk I’m giving is on restful APIs with Node and Express. It’s basically a teaser about what you can do with Node. If you like it, you’ll have resources to take from there.
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Jonathan Mills will be giving his presentations “Getting Started with Angular” and “Build a Restful API with Node.js and Express” at AIM HDC Sept 9-11. Buy your tickets now.
Ryan Pendell is the Managing Editor of Silicon Prairie News.
