It's been a while!

It truly has been a while since I have posted anything here. To be quite honest, I have immersed myself in so much JavaScript best practices, new patterns, performance optimization, etc, that I have highly neglected this blog!

Since my last few posts, I have increased in my JS knowledge IMMENSELY, and that is no joke. I am w3schools certified (link to cert) *with excellence*. I got 69 of the 70 questions right! Woo hoo!

I have studied very carefully presentations, books, papers, etc from various JS gurus, Nicholas Zakas, Douglas Crockford, John Resig, etc. I actually printed out the current ECMAScript specification and read it on a flight to Las Vegas for a team meeting.

I am not joking when I say this, JavaScript is one of my biggest passions. If I could do nothing but analyze problems and engineer solutions in JavaScript all day long, I would do it!

Unfortunately, there isn't really that great of a job market that I can find. I don't have any degrees as of yet, and the area I live in really kind of prevents me from finding any solid JS jobs, and it'd be REALLY hard for me to relocate.

Members on my team at work think I'm really good at JS, and I think I'm pretty good, too. I'd like to be able to focus solely on that, as it is easily my biggest strength, but it's really hard to do that right now.

I'll keep it as a hobby, and maybe one day, I'll find a JS engineering job to call my home.

In other news, I am going to check out Dojo. I've been using jQuery for a very long time now, and I'm interested to dive into another JS library. I like what Dojo brings to the table. I haven't had a chance to dive into the source just yet, but at face value, it promises to offer some really neat functionality.

I am in the process of checking out the repository for the source now (it's huge). I like to dive into source code when I'm picking something new up.

I also purchased a book called Mastering Dojo: JavaScript and Ajax Tools for Great Web Experiences to read over the next few days.

I'm excited to really dig in and learn some new stuff!