I am John Resig, creator of jQuery, AMA.

Thanks for all the hard work. You made javascript enjoyable for me.

My pleasure - glad to hear it! :)

My Web Development 101 class actually had a section on jQuery, pretty crazy that something you started is taught in University. Thanks for the hard work!

It's still kind of baffling to me that this happens. I have a really hard time believing it, ha!

You should work on making .ajax() POST requests of Reddit's comment forms more robust...

Cause seriously: http://k.min.us/inrxfO.PNG

Also, enjoy the jQuery codeporn in the background. :)

You have to remember the motto - 502, it went through, 504, submit some more! That should be baked into the JavaScript code :)

What do you think of JQueery

Still hilarious :)

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Haha, sssshhhh, don't tell anyone! I tend to find that when I'm working on something that is truly engrossing other distractions just kind of melt away. For that reason I try to find truly interesting work. Of course, it doesn't help when I'm working on things that are boring or less interesting, heh.

What is your development setup? (Software)

I use OS X on an iMac with an extra monitor. For coding I use VIM in a terminal and have a screen session open to IRC in another terminal window. I then have a plethora of browsers open (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera - a VMWare with IEs) for testing. That's pretty much all that I use and need to use (I have a very similar set up on my Macbook Pro, as well).

All the mac hater programmers had a mini-stroke right now.

The only reason I dislike Macs is because they're too expensive for me. It's more of a "I can build a better computer for less, while yours is more shiny and reliable with support".

I'm really bad at building computers. I've tried in the past, gotten shocked too many times, had parts fail - I've given up and just use off-the-shelf stuff these days. Life is too short.

irssi?

Yep! Works just fine for me.

Not a fan of Linux?

I use to use FreeBSD as my primary OS, although I find that OS X works better for me, personally.

What specifically will you be doing at Khan Academy? Front-end, back-end or advising role, JS tutorials, CTO, CEO? Either way, I am glad to see two geniuses collaborating on a great project and one that I am happy for the sake of my children.

I will be doing two things primarily: I will be managing their Open Source efforts. Making sure that it's easy as possible to get people involved with the development of the code base and general contributions (such as contributing exercises).

I'm also going to be doing front-end development. Working on frameworks for developers, working on the mobile application, and other things that come up. A lot of this is at my discretion, it just so happens that these are the areas that I'm interested in (and they're happy to have me work on them!).

What do you think of CoffeeScript? Just generally speaking.

(As I mentioned in another comment) Coffeescript is surprisingly sexy. I hope to try and use it soon.

What was the first jQuery site that you remember seeing that you hadn't built / didn't have anything to do with?

I'm not sure if I remember the first site - but I do remember the first plugin. It was a plugin by Michael Geary and released only about 1 week after jQuery came out: http://mg.to/2006/01/25/json-for-jquery

I was able to meet him a couple years later (which was awesome). He had a hilarious story about how he was the first person fired from Apple (apparently while Apple was still just in a garage). Funny stuff.

Would you mind telling this story? :)

The Apple story? John has (hopefully) forgotten the sad details, and I shouldn't take over his AMA unless he wants me to recount it here.

I suppose I could do an "I may have been the first guy Steve Jobs ever fired" AMA? :-)

Haha, go to town Michael - or even do a separate AMA! It's a great story :)

What was your experience like working at Mozilla? What were some of the things did you accomplish there that you thought were particularly important?

Mozilla was (is!) a great company, truly unlike any other. Everything that you do is in the open (released as Open Source) and it's actually frowned upon to develop, or work on things, in private. The result is generally a very collaborative atmosphere.

I think the things that I'm most proud of from my time there were the creation of Test Swarm (distributed unit testing across browsers - think Seti@Home for JavaScript test suites), Dromaeo (cross-platform JavaScript/DOM performance analysis), and the blogging that I did as a JavaScript Evangelist (circa 2007-2008). I enjoyed all of that very much. Naturally I especially liked being able to work on jQuery full-time during the past year and a half - can't complain about that! :)

Where the hell do you find the time to do all this?

While it may look like a ton of work at one time, all of the work that I've done happened over the past 6 years or so. It seems much more reasonable when spread out :) That being said, I love coding. I do it in my spare time after work - even on weekends (of course, my loved ones and friends always take priority). So yeah, that tends to help.

What is the biggest surprise for you professionally? Did you ever think you'd be where you are at right now?

Oh, I absolutely did not think I was going to be here. The explosion of jQuery has been completely overwhelming, I'm still surprised. It pleases me the most to hear people who never would've coded JavaScript were it not for jQuery - it was a gateway that lead them to coding and got them interested in going even further. That warms my heart :)

Why did you start /r/sex?

Why not?

So true.

Hey John,

Dave Fisher here. We've had drinks at Betahouse and a few other places around town.

Have you been tempted to work for Google/Twitter/Microsoft/Apple/Facebook? Surely they've tried to recruit you, considering your skills and I'm sure they'd pay you handsomely. But at the same time, I know you're the type of guy who isn't just looking solely for a paycheck. Can you talk a bit about what really motivates you in working for an organization like Mozilla or Khan over one that's got a huge amount of funding/revenue and will gold plate your laptop?

Thanks for all your awesomeness. Hopefully I run into you at some point around Somerville.

Hey Dave! I've definitely gotten offers from other companies, some of whom you listed - and yes, I'd be getting paid much more.

I will happily work for half as much if it means that I can work on a problem that I enjoy for people that will enjoy it. So yeah, Mozilla and Khan are both non-profits, but I'm getting paid well enough and I enjoy my work and love being paid to help others. It really doesn't get better than this.

See you around Somerville!

Hi John,

Every year the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's ACM runs a tech conference called Reflections | Projections. We would love to have you come and speak about your work with jquery!

I'm going to PM you the full invite details. But you can check out our website at http://acm.uiuc.edu/conference . We have a lot of great speakers already lined up (including Khan Academy's Ben Kamens!).

Hope to hear from you soon, Rob

Thanks for the offer Rob! I would love to come and speak someday. Unfortunately for the time being I'm not taking on any new speaking engagements, so that I can focus more on my work and development. Definitely in the future, though!

How is your typical day? How do you 'get things done'? Any tips on personal time/task management?

Oh god, I'm the poster child of what you shouldn't do if you want to get things done. I can provide no advice here that will be of any service to you, haha.

Who is your favorite Starcraft player to watch? Do you actually play? If so, which race? I also watch entirely too much Starcraft and love jQuery as well :)

I have a large number of players that I love. At the moment I really enjoy watching Spanishiwa (I mean, who doesn't?). His good humor and inventive play style is simply a joy to watch. When I voted for the NASL players I voted for: Jinro, Huk, Minigun, Dimaga, MarineKingPrime, Idra, Kiwikaki, TLO, and Whitera. I watch the GSL primarily and a ton of casts on SC2Casts.com.

I do play, but only like 1-2 games a week. Because of that I'm only Silver (haha). I play Protoss, but for no particular reason.

hey john - what are your thoughts on @dhh's twitter semi-announcement of the Cinco project, which sounds like it will be "javascript-on-rails"?

I totally missed this. I wonder if it will be better than Yegge's Rhino on Rails: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html

Either way, I'm all about getting JavaScript used in more places by more people - so go them!

I don't have much to ask you because I don't know much about programming or scripting, but I know that jquery is a very important library for most basic functions of most very popular websites, and I'd like to thank you for shaping the way the web is viewed today.

Your welcome, glad to help! :)

You're* ;)

FFFFUUUUUU

What are your favorite javascript books and/or blogs? What was the biggest AHA! moment you had while developing jQuery?

Unfortunately I don't really read many JavaScript books or blogs these days. To kind of keep watch on the pulse of what's going on I watch Dion Almaer's twitter feed, found here: https://twitter.com/#!/dalmaer

Probably the biggest AHA! that I had was regarding the reduction in syntax by using chaining. I actually wrote about this discovery, when I had it, back in 2005: http://ejohn.org/blog/selectors-in-javascript/

What browser do you use primarily?

For my day-to-day browsing I use Firefox 4 with the Adblock Plus and PasswordMaker extensions installed. However for testing I use all the major browsers. This is a screenshot of my current dock: http://gyazo.com/15e6847cd0aa54a8a850134d3da917e8.png

(Not shown: The browsers that are loaded up in my VMWare instance.)

For development I use Firefox + Firebug and Chrome + Developer tools (bounce between the two).

Do you use a lot of firebug? While I love the convenience of jQuery I find my brain hurts more when I try to inspect/debug things with firebug.

Yep! I use both Firebug and the Chrome developer tools. I've had good luck with both so I'm not really sure what problems you might be encountering. Firebug has had an... interesting... past and it's a pretty gnarly code base so any number of things could be up with your config.

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The syntax and style of Closure doesn't really appeal to me, personally, but in general I have no problem with other libraries and people using whatever they like (Closure included!) - as long as it supports developing in a cross-platform nature. I honestly haven't used the Closure library for development so I can't really speak as to how it works and how it compares to jQuery, unfortunately.

What's your favorite text editing software ?

I use VIM for my day-to-day code writing and Textmate for my text writing (for blog posts, long comments, etc.). I tend to find that I can code faster when using VIM so it works well for me!

Tabs or Spaces?

More importantly: Soda or Pop?

Tabs. I know, I can already feel the hate. (And Soda.)

Builtin Terminal.app, iTerm 1 or iTerm 2?

Builtin. I kind of need to explain myself, though. I'm incredibly lazy when it comes to actually improving my setup. I will happily use the default settings for things - for years - before ever thinking to configure it to become better. So yeah, I've used iTerm 1 before, it was good, no idea why I'm not using it now.

Do you have your vimrc and/or your plugin list posted anywhere? I'm always fascinated to see what other people use for their setup, and more importantly, what I can steal to make my setup a little bit nicer.

I just uploaded my .vimrc here: https://gist.github.com/955547

Hope that helps!

For VIM what extensions do you use for web development? Such as which javascript highlighting/indentation, switching between multiple languages in one document (javascript and HTML in the same doc), and any other neat ones. I switched from Textmate to VIM about a year ago but always feel that VIM lacks a bit here.

I just use the basic JavaScript syntax highlighting and the default indentation logic, nothing too special. Probably should look to find something better.

What is your favorite memory of your time with CSH?

CSH is Computer Science House (it's a specialty house at RIT, the college that I went to). I lived there for two years (Freshman and Sophomore years). I have great memories regarding CSH and it was absolutely instrumental in helping me break out of my traditionally quiet-and-nerdy shell into who I am today.

Probably my favorite times there were actually during the summer after my Freshman year. I lived on campus with a bunch of other CSH guys, took classes, had BBQs, went on trips, had parties, and just generally had an awesome time. To this day it's still one of my favorite experiences from my life.

jQuery is great for handling UI interfaces and cross-browser differences, but as apps get more architecture-centric (mvc, etc.) and browsers more capable, the core of jQuery will become less important. How will jQuery evolve with that?

Are you particularly into web architecture yourself?

Does it need to evolve with that? jQuery is phenomenally good at what it does. I've been watching the other frameworks work on making it easier to create libraries that support larger architectures (like Backbone, for example). It's very interesting to see how they tackle the challenge - no two frameworks do it in the same way. I'd be terribly presumptuous of us to declare one technique as "the way" to write "large applications".

Instead right now we're working on a new section of the jQuery site that shows how to create large applications using all the other tools that are available - in a completely unbiased and impartial way. I think that this is the best thing that we can provide to the community at large.

I'm not sure what it means to be "into web architecture." I suspect that I'm not. I really dislike over-architecting code. It seems to happen far too frequently and it's a real pain.

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Sounds interesting - link me up when it's out!

which JQuery plugin you like the most and why?

I like the plugins where you just snap something in and things "just work". Mike Alsup's Ajax Form plugin $("form").ajaxForm(); BAM! The form is now submitted via Ajax. jQuery UI's Sortable plugin: $("ul").sortable(); BAM! You can now sort the list of items. Doesn't get much better than that.

How would you improve Javascript?

I probably wouldn't touch the JavaScript language much. Far too contentious. On the other hand - the DOM? I would destroy it and replace it with something far more useful (something far more like jQuery, for sure). I've been kicking around a few proposals but I haven't thought of something that I particularly like yet (as something that should be in a browser). I've been talking with browser vendors and the W3C - I do hope to make some improvements there at some point (and hopefully sooner rather than later).

What are the fundamental problems with the DOM?

I think I talked about this issue a bit in this talk that I gave at Yahoo: http://ejohn.org/blog/the-dom-is-a-mess/

As a web developer who has just recently started getting into jQuery, it's great to hear you state that the DOM should get a revamp. Glad I'm not the only one who feels that way.

It feels like such a non-controversial thing to say though. Seriously - who doesn't dislike the DOM?

Hey, John! What do you make of the recent focus on micro JS frameworks? Will jQuery be taking more of a modular approach in the future, or be influenced by this discussion at all?

Amusingly jQuery tried to take this modular approach a few years ago and it didn't go very well. I created the Sizzle JavaScript library, independent of jQuery, and tried to get other libraries to depend upon it so that we could cut down on our dependency load. Only Prototype jumped aboard - MooTools, YUI, and Dojo all bowed out. I suspect that we'll want to try again with some parts of the library (like the data module and perhaps the events module) - but we'll have to see!

Creating a truly modular version of jQuery would be very hard and wouldn't make a lot of sense. A lot of methods depend upon a single other method in another module - but does that mean that the whole other module should be loaded? Thankfully developers shouldn't think about this too much and should, instead, just use the Google Closure compiler! Turning on the advanced options, tossing in jQuery, their plugins, and their code will result in a highly compressed version of the library with all the non-essential parts stripped out. If file size is your concern I definitely recommend this path.

Greetings from RIT. For the record, everyone still uses the computer science house scheduler. What's your opinion of RIT and the education you got here?

Hilarious. I wrote that scheduler back in 2002 - it's a terrible Perl/CGI script that should be taken out back and shot. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, it's a program where you can put in all the classes that you could take and it generates the best possible schedule for you. Very simple, people seemed to like it though!

RIT is good - it's definitely what you make of it, though. I tried to go above the normal education - did independent studies with professors, worked in a research lab, got involved in Computer Science House - stuff like that. For those reasons I feel like my education was better than it probably would've been if I had only gone to classes and back home.

What are some other board/card games you enjoy?

Settlers of Catan, Power Grid, Puerto Rico, Carcassonne, Le Havre, and Agricola - all favorites of mine.

Do you think the jQuery library will implement websockets in the future or make it as easy as using ajax these days?

Doubtful. Doesn't really make sense given the current architecture of jQuery. Thankfully though we have a very-extensible API for the Ajax module (new in 1.5!) that you can write a plugin for. :)

Can you talk about any internships that might have prepared you for the awesomeness you grew into?

In college I was a researcher in the Data Mining Research Group at RIT (this was my co-op during college). It was wayyy different from a typical internship (was doing research, implementing algorithms, writing research papers, writing grant proposals, etc.). It helped me a lot to get integrated into a team and get interested in trying to do cool things in Computer Science.

I also interned at a web and branding studio called Brand Logic. Did some web development there. It was while I was working there that I started to play around with JavaScript (around 2004) and I realized that there was some potential there. Made me want to dig further!

You ever stop and think "Hmm, maybe I'd like to have a ranch" instead of coding? You could always name your horses things like "Mocha," "Coffee" and "Java."

Haha - I've definitely thought about dropping coding before. It probably won't happen for many, many, years though. I enjoy it far too much. I'd definitely love to retire to some place nice and quiet some day, though. Probably not a ranch, definitely near a lake.

1. What did you do before JQuery, like why did PG what to make sure you know about Reddit? 2. Do you think Kahn is about to get radically more interactive?

It has more to do with the fact that I was reading lots of Paul Graham essays at the time and following his work closely (reading his book on Lisp, etc.). I remember him mentioning Reddit at some point so I followed along (even though I was a Digg user).

I'm very optimistic for Khan Academy. The full extent of what I'm going to do there remains to be seen but I absolutely want to try hard to improve the experience and generally just make things awesome. I can't wait!

Which startup you got accepted to YCombinator for?

It was a startup called JumpChat. The description was: "A platform bridging mobile text messages, email, and IM communication without needing to download anything. Users can send mass messages on any of the platforms and JumpChat will send it to the platform the receiver activates. They are currently focusing on mass mobile messaging, where users can shoot off mass messages to the groups they define."

We were wayy ahead of our time. Like Facebook messaging 5 years too early (as stated by a commenter on Hacker News).

While working for Mozilla, how much time did you spend on jQuery open source work vs. actual Mozilla related things? How do you think is that going to change at Khan Academy?

During the past year and half I worked pretty much exclusively on jQuery-related things. While at Khan Academy I'll be scaling that back to a reasonable amount of time (which will fluctuate based upon the releases that are coming out, conferences, etc.). jQuery is in a really good place right now so I don't need to dedicate 100% of my time to it, so I can afford to scale back a bit.

• Which starcraft caster do you like most?
• Do you play or just watch (and if you play, which league)?
• Where do you think server-side javascript is going to be in a near future? Do you think it will compete with things like python, ruby, java and etc?
• What do you think about coffeescript?

Ooh, which caster. That's a tough one. The Artosis + Tasteless pair in the GSL simply can't be beat, overall. For individual casters I really like Artosis, Day[9], TotalBiscuit, AskJoshy, DjWheat, diggity, and a bunch of others. Artosis is just awesome though!

I play a bit, couple times a week. Silver (heh) Protoss. Don't have nearly enough time to try and get good.

I've been doing a lot of Node.js lately and have been disappointed in the APIs that it provides. It could be so much better. I think it'll compete eventually but for right now it has a long hard hill to climb before getting there.

Coffeescript is surprisingly sexy. I hope to try and use it soon.

Would you mind expanding on your gripes/concerns with Node.js?

Optional arguments that aren't optional, primarily support asynchronous behavior (ignoring potential synchronous usecases), and making things that should be way simple (like "give me a string of HTML from this URL") very very hard. I've dug through a bunch of the modules on npm and the like - but a lot of work still needs to be done.

I am curious about your time at RIT (I went there for a couple years: '01-'03):

1. Did you get your undergrad at RIT?
2. What years where you at RIT?
3. Did you enjoy your time at RIT?
4. Did you live in the dorms? If so, which one?

5. Did you live in a special interest house?

1. Can you please tell me something random (anything) about RIT.

Also, thank you very much for choosing to work at the Khan Academy. I think the work they are doing is so important.

*Edit: read below that you were in CSH

Yep! Got my BS in Computer Science from RIT. I was there from 2002 - 2005. I did enjoy my time there - getting to spend time with people at Computer Science House and doing research in the Data Mining Research Group were definitely the highlights.

Random: I remember being so proud of when I figured out a route from the dorms to GCCIS (the CS college building) that was almost entirely tunnel-based. This allowed me to avoid the nasty Rochester winter weather.

I have to ask... do you by any chance use Reddit Enhancement Suite?

Don't look at the source code. It's too much of a spare time project. Lots of mess in there I'm sure.

I don't use it but I definitely want to! Just haven't had the time to install it yet. I follow the RES sub-reddit though. Keep up the good work!

Thank you for saving me money.

-Employer of developers who say they can do many things faster with jQuery.

No problem - don't forget to donate to the project! http://jquery.org/donate/

Since starting JQuery mobile, how much do you hate older blackberry devices?

It's pretty high up there. Not as much hate as I have reserved for older Windows Mobile devices. Before the current (and previous) gen of Windows phones the browser was roughly equivalent to IE 4. Terrifying.

First, the questions:

• Do you have any early information for us on the API you envision for the 'problem set' engine at khanacademy? I'm interested to see how a problem and its success criteria is defined, the "quiz" specification format, how the results are stored, etc.
• Do you plan to release the problem set tools as an independent library?
• Do you think your work with khanacademy will eventually help other teaching projects like Moodle and codingbat?
• Has your work on unit testing tools given you special insight into how you plan to approach problem sets for khanacademy? I imagine testing software has significant parallels with testing rote human knowledge (at least).
• Do you plan to do anything like WolframAlpha's API for handling human input?
• Since visualization/graphing are so key to teaching, are you going to be using flot or Processing.js for the visualization/graphical elements? Do you foresee any visualization libraries being used or improved as a result of their integration with khanacademy?

Secondly, sir, you are a true hacker, a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you. I've been designing and coding web sites since '97, but in the time since I discovered jQuery, I have begun and completed more projects than in all of the years before. It has made my life easier, my work more productive and creative, and given me far greater insight into pure JavaScript. But that's only how your work has affected me.

• The effect your work has had in unifying the behavior of browsers has liberated an entire generation of web developers.
• You have built a thriving and extensive open source community around jQuery, which is a heroic feat for any project.
• You listen, respond and participate with the community of people who use your software. Whether it's at jquery, twitter, reddit or hacker news, I am always surprised to see your composed and qualified replies in some very deeply nested comments.
• You are voluntarily moving on from a dream job at a company that has a demonstrable history of leaping improvements to the technological foundations of the internet to contribute to a non-profit project that has the potential to change human education on a global scale.

EDIT: Formatting

Phew - a lot here.

I haven't really thought about the API for the problem set engine yet - will be starting at Khan next week! I hope to release it independently, for sure. I'm not sure if it'll help other projects, but I hope so! I definitely plan on unit testing the problem sets themselves. It'll be tricky but it'll be worth it, I feel. Not sure about handling human input. I know that Khan is already using some visualization libraries, not sure which though - I'll have to look into it!

Glad you've been enjoying jQuery and thanks for the kind words! :)

What is the secret to becoming a successful redditor?

I'm not sure I'd consider myself to be a successful redditor. I don't comment very much, I submit links even less. I just use the site like everyone else (glorified lurking, for the most part). The main reason why I happen to have a lot of sub-reddits is that I ended up creating them very early on in the sub-reddit process. Kind of lucked out in that way. Of course, now that I have them, I like making sure that they are in good health :) So some advice to other Reddit moderators: Listen to your community, don't be dicks, and keep out the riff-raff.

Hi John, what do you think about Douglas Crockfords JavaScript: The Good Parts. Recently i have read on HN some bad critics about that book. I would like to know your opinion. Thx. :)

JavaScript: The Good Parts is a really interesting lens through which you can view the JavaScript language. It will likely help you better understand the code that you're writing. Will it help you create better web applications though? Doubtful. It barely mentions the DOM - which is a fundamental aspect of day-to-day web development. Any JavaScript book that doesn't mention the DOM simply isn't made with web development in mind.

What kind of stuff do you hope to achieve at the Khan Academy? Where do you see the website/organization going?

A bit more information over here: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/h42ak/i_am_john_resig_creator_of_jquery_ama/c1serpf

I really hope that Khan Academy is able to grow and provide a substantial platform for people of any background or nationality to learn from. Being able to help people around the world learn, for free, is simply an amazing opportunity and it excites me a lot.

did you make any money off jQuery?

Directly? No. Indirectly in that I have a good job and I've written books on JavaScript? Sure - but likely not much more than what would come from a normal development job.

What got you into ukiyoe?

I'm familiar w/ it only through family members who are asian art historians. It's neat stuff :)

I initially got interested sometime back in 2009. I don't remember how I "discovered" the art form initially (probably stumbled across a web site, or some such). I eventually did more research and bought some prints - then kept doing research and buying more prints (it's a vicious cycle). The art style itself is what got me hooked initially, but then I got more interested in the history behind it. Right now I have a massive stack of books that I'm reading. At the moment I'm focusing on Kabuki theatre and the Yoshiwara (the prostitution district in Edo (Tokyo)). I simply want to try and learn as much as possible about this timeframe, I find it to be absolutely fascinating. At this point I'm far more interested in getting awesome books on the culture of Edo-era Japan.

Hi John. I actually met you briefly at the jQuery Conference in Boston last year, and it was one of the most exciting moments of my life. I wish I had some sort of eloquent philosophical question for you, but I don't. However, I do want to at least say that you are an inspiration to me personally. My biggest life goal is to impact the world as positively and significantly as you have with my own coding pursuits.

You seem to actually "get" open source, and the joy of programming. Thanks for everything you've done for the community, and the world at large.

Thanks man, I'm really glad I can be of service and that you enjoy the work that I do. Thank you. Hope to see you again soon!

First I'd like to thank you for all hard work in the Javascript and Mozilla communities. Your hard work makes quite a few of our lives so much easier every day.

What kind of projects are you planning on working on over at Khan Academy, and where you would like to see Khan Academy (and education in general) going?

I think I was able to answer this over here: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/h42ak/i_am_john_resig_creator_of_jquery_ama/c1sewzg