Monday Profile: Greg Rewis
Our series of interviews with conference speakers for Scroll Magazine has proven very popular, both for the insights each has given into that particular speaker but also how they compare to each other. This week, we profile Greg Rewis, speaker at Code 16.
For another perspective, later in the week you can also see the video interview I conducted with Greg.
Q: What made you decide you could do this for a living?
A: I actually kind of tripped into my career. I was working in the late 80s in Denmark at a newspaper and magazine publisher as a journalist. And one day, some boxes containing some Mac IIfx computers showed up. I was the only one in the office that had any experience on a Mac, so I went about setting them up, installing software (QuarkXPress 1.12 and Illustrator 88!), and showing my colleagues how to work them. Any time someone would get stuck, I ended up being the person they called. Needless to say, my career as a journalist quickly turned into my career in IT.
Through that transition, I began thinking about the software we were using to create our publications, which took me to the first MacWorld in Berlin. I had the good fortune to talk with a couple of developers out of Hamburg who were building a publishing system based around QuarkXPress. A few conversations later and a trip to Hamburg and I had a new job as the product manager for their publishing system.
A few years later, we began working on a project to mark up the stories in the database for re-use on things like CD-ROMs. That little project turned into one of the first HTML authoring tools, originally named GoLive, which would become GoLive Cyberstudio, and eventually Adobe GoLive. After Adobe’s acquisition of GoLive, I “defected” to Macromedia to help build Dreamweaver. Of course, the joke was on me, as Macromedia was eventually acquired by Adobe.
As a product manager, you have an opportunity to do presentations. And I ended up, not only liking to do presentations, but actually being really good at it! So somewhere along the line, I transitioned to being a full time developer evangelist.
Q: Have you ever coded live on stage, or in front of an audience? How did it go?
A: All the time. I actually really enjoy live coding, as I think it helps establish credibility. As a developer evangelist, it’s important that the audience understands that I really do know what I’m talking about and I’m not simply doing a marketing or sales pitch.
And, at least for me, live coding helps with that. The one key is that the coding actually accomplishes something — in other words, I’m doing it so that I can simultaneously explain something without having someone “read ahead” on a slide.
Q: How do you further develop and extend your skills? Books, courses? Noodling by yourself?
A: A large part of my job is “noodling”. In fact, that’s how almost every demo I’ve ever done has come about. Whenever I’m learning something new, I try to think “what could I build”? As an example, when I joined Salesforce and began learning the platform, I immediately pulled out an old project built on a different technology stack and thought “how could I rebuild this for Salesforce”. I find that building my own project helps me learn faster than simply doing someone else’s tutorial.
Q: Is it better to learn HTML then CSS then JavaScript, or JavaScript then HTML then CSS, or all three at once, or something else?
A: On the question of HTML or CSS, I think they should probably be learned together, because without CSS, HTML is pretty boring. And although there are roles in which you only need HTML and CSS, I think most front-end roles today also require a good understanding of JavaScript.
The important thing about learning JavaScript is to learn JavaScript, and not a framework or library. I know a lot of developers that started with jQuery, and that’s fine. But even if you are using jQuery (or Angular/React/Backbone/etc), it behoves you to understand the plain vanilla JavaScript. Because at the end of the day, even if you are “writing jQuery”, you’re still writing JavaScript.
Q: What’s the best way to get more women coding?
A: The simple answer is to get them interested. But doing that means that we have to do two things. The first is to break down the typical nerd or geek stereotype in a way that makes young girls think “I could see myself doing that”. Having the typical image of a developer being someone who is socially awkward, with no sense of style, would make even a younger me not want to pursue that job!
The other — and perhaps much harder — challenge is to craft an environment where those girls and women who choose to become developers feel safe and welcome. No one wants to work in a hostile environment, but that is what many women in the industry feel about working as developers.
Q: Frameworks. What’s your take? Are they good, bad or does it depend on how you use them?
A: Frameworks can be awesome — but they also can be a crutch. The important thing, as I mentioned before, is that you know how to survive without them. I once saw someone include jQuery in order to do something that could’ve been achieved in less than 10 lines of plain JavaScript.
Q: Tabs or spaces?
A: For? It’s actually quite simple. Tabs are for indentation, spaces separate words.
Q: What’s on your horizon?
A: Setting off to sail around the world … in 5 years. But before that, continuing to learn and grow as a developer. It’s really awesome (and tiring) to be in an industry that is growing and changing so quickly.
Great reading, every weekend.
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