Ryan Kinal
100 E. St. Clair St.
Warren, PA 16365
716.581.1000
ryan.kinal@gmail.com
Ryan Kinal is a programmer and web developer, specializing in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS,
with experience in PHP, SQL, ASP.NET, and graphic design. But beyond being technologically inclined, he is also artistically motivated, through music, lindy hop, and drawing in various media. Combining these interests and talents, he is a skilled developer with an eye for aesthetic design.
That Old Feeling
Friday, January 22nd 2:42 am
Sometimes, I feel like a superhero.
No kidding, there are times when I get the perfect call (or email, or IM, whatever). It's somebody with a problem that suits my skillset and preferences perfectly.
These dropdown menus are buggy, and they needed to be done yesterday! You're the only one who can save us!
Of course, I'm not the only one who can save the day. There are plenty of developers out there who have the skills necessary to debug JavaScript, make a recommendation, and follow through with that recommendation. But when somebody says that to me, and I get into the groove of debugging, testing, and implementing solutions, well, it's a whole lot of fun.
This happened to me last night. Somebody contacted me on oDesk, said they needed someone with my skills, and we got something going. I spent some time debugging their current dropdown menus, recommended that we replace them with jQuery dropdowns (as they were using jQuery for other features anyway), and implemented them. All within the space of a few hours. We made a few positioning tweaks, and the site was ready for the client to see.
And no joke, I was fired up about it. I had swooped in and saved the day. This is what makes all the crap worth it. All the times when a project is being bogged down with feature requests, or delayed by funding or content issues. The superhero feeling is what maykes my job fun.
For me, the ideal situation is as follows:
- Fairly short term project
- Mostly front-end coding - HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- Good people to work with
In my experience, long term projects are always fraught with errors, feature requests, unending changes to the design, and technology breakdowns. It's a pain.
I've also always enjoyed front-end coding more than back end, as I've mentioned before. It might just be that I enjoy the visual, results-oriented part of coding, rather than the data storage and manipulation. In fact, that's probably it.
Then there are good people to work with. I've worked with some great teams. The LUMI team and the SkinnyWater team are shining examples - both of which were with IDC Partners/Ivory Tower Group. I like it when the people I talk to on a regular basis have at least some idea of what goes into actual code. It makes it easier to communicate what I need, what I need to do, and what they need from me.
Do other developers feel the same way sometimes? Like they've just solved all the world's problems with 30 lines of JavaScript?
If not, I kind of wonder what they're doing in this industry.
(The title of this post is the title of a song written way back in 1937, and recorded by many different artists)