Developer Spotlight: Darrin Holst 19

Join us as we talk to developers large and small in the webOS community. This week: Darrin Holst. Are you a developer interested in getting spotlighted? Hit us up!

Name: Darrin Holst

Company: SemicolonApps 

Location: Des Moines, Iowa

webOS Apps: Feeder, Reboxed, Spare Time

Current device: iPhone 4. Sorry, I have a Palm Pre Plus for testing.

Tell us about yourself. Really, we want to know.

I have been in software development since 1997 starting off with Assembler and COBOL on the mainframes progressing to C++ then to Java then to web development with Ruby/Rails and Javascript. I currently work for t8webware.com doing frontend javascript/css work and backend java work. I'm married with 3 kids ranging from 2 to 18. We live on an acreage about 30 miles NW of Des Moines where we have a small petting zoo of 3 dogs, 2 cats, 3 fish, a turtle, 10 chickens, and 3 turkeys.

What in your background led you to develop for webOS?

When I first started doing web development around 2006 the first javascript library we used was Prototype. I really enjoyed using it. Then about a year and a half ago my former employer was getting into mobile apps and Palm was a client of theirs so they decided to create a webOS app. With my Prototype experience I felt the development environment was very natural.

Why do you continue to develop for webOS?

I am currently just doing bug fixes and small feature requests, but the only reason I'm even doing that is because of the users. Everyone talks about the Palm developer community, but the user community is equally as good.

Do you have any plans or hopes to do new webOS development?

I definitely have hopes to do more development, but no concrete plans at the moment.

Do you do any development for other platforms?

Currently no, but I have developed for Blackberry, iOS, and Android.

So how does your webOS experience compare?

There is no comparison, webOS is the best development environment out there for me. It's nice to not have to have some big IDE and just fire up my favorite text editor and get stuff done.

What’s your take on the current state of webOS development?

Pessimistic. It's a chicken and egg thing when it comes to getting good developers and apps on the platform without the user base that the others enjoy.

So how do we get ourselves a chicken or an egg to jumpstart growth and optimism?

If I knew how to get more developers on a platform I'd be a very rich man:) For me, as a user, it came down to hardware. I really wanted an iPhone or HTClike slab phone for webOS and we just didn't get it. I can't stand the physical keyboard and the slider... just a personal preference... I understand the history that Palm users have with their keyboards.

Where do you see webOS development going in the future? In particular, how do you see Enyo and devices like the TouchPad running webOS 3.0 affecting your development?

I'm not a big fan of Enyo (as an HP only development framework). Part of the draw of webOS for me was that I can use all my web development skills (html, javascript, css) very easily with Mojo. Now we are expected to learn a new framework. Now if they open it up to run in other environments then it may be worth learning.

But Enyo at its core is still web tech, no?

Enyo has part of the web stack covered, which is the javascript part, but they extract the HTML and CSS part away from the developer to be handled by the framework. Mojo development was very analogous to web development, Enyo not so much.

Given the chance, what’s the one thing you would change about the webOS development process?

I don't have any complaints as it is now, I wish they would have stuck with the Mojo framework. The Developer Relations Team is the best out there.

What are you working on right now?

By day I'm pulling my hair out doing boring big enterprise client work. Free time is hard to come by these days, but anything I do when I have is out on github: https://github.com/darrinholst

Thank you so much for your time. Any parting thoughts for the webOS community?

The webOS community is the best I've ever seen. It's unfortunate that they have not had the hardware behind webOS to really grow it more than it has, hopefully that will change in the coming months.