Carson Gibbons
July 06, 2017
Dust off your cape, because a new Developer Hero joins us in our latest installment of the Cosmic Developer Spotlight Series. We sat down with Jason Price, a full stack web application developer and JavaScript enthusiast. Jason lives and works at Squirrels, a product-centric dev shop that produces "Apps to go Nuts for." Check him out on Twitter, and enjoy the Q/A.
How long have you been building software?
I’ve been building websites since the early days of just flat HTML sites. I got into PHP when I was trying to make a website for the t-shirt printing business that I was running out of my basement (around 2006). I kept working to make my website better and started spending less time actually printing shirts. So while my website was sweet, my business suffered. One day I was looking for freelance work and came across a job opening as a web application developer. I was hired on the spot and shut the t-shirt business down the same day. Been doing web apps ever since.
What is your preferred development stack?
I am a full stack JavaScript developer. I have a lot of different server setups but my favorite is Dokku on a Digital Ocean droplet with a Node app running Express. I have an app running FeathersJS out there too and I’m starting to use that more and more. As for the client, I’m still running a lot of Backbone apps but I’m starting to move those over to React. React and Redux are just awesome. As for the data, I use a mixture of MongoDB / Mongoose, Firebase, and Cosmic.
What past projects are you most proud of and why?
My favorite project so far has been GoDitto. It’s a really cool app that lets you mirror your screen instantly in any room that has an Apple TV or Chromecast. The way it works is you setup your receivers as rooms in the admin console. Once a room is setup, it’s given a code that you can use to get a one time download of an application that knows to connect your screen to that receiver. There is A LOT going on under the hood and almost all of it is handled by Node and JavaScript.
Talk about building apps in your world. Has Cosmic helped your development cycle?
I’d rather use Cosmic over other cloud-based database solutions or running my own database server. In some situations, you just need somewhere to put the data that someone who is kinda savvy can update. I can just set someone up as a user in my Cosmic Bucket and let them add and edit all the data they want. If they need more hand-holding, I have the freedom to build out a User Interface for specific Admin functions. If no one needs access, then they don’t get it. I can make my calls to get the data from the client or the server which makes it great for universal apps. I’ve honestly wanted to build something like Cosmic for years because I’ve always needed it. When I stumbled across a Reddit post saying something like “cloud-based CMS”, I was overjoyed.
What technologies are you excited about that you are using today or want to learn more about?
I’m looking forward to the advancement of things like isomorphic React apps, AWS Lambda, StdLib, and some various microservice architectures that are really changing the game with how a website or web app get data to the users. Also, watching Node and JavaScript grow into a first class programming language has been fun. I’m anxious to see how much it’s going to take over.
Cosmic Developer Spotlight Series
Developer Spotlight: Abe Hendricks
Developer Spotlight: Brian Mullis
Developer Spotlight: Micah Walter
Developer Spotlight: Joe Tuson
Developer Spotlight: Coding Dojo
Developer Spotlight: Simple Media
Developer Spotlight: Jon Kalfayan
Developer Spotlight: Jon Bloomer
Cosmic is an API-first cloud-based content management platform that makes it easy to manage applications and content. If you have questions about the Cosmic API, please reach out to us on Twitter or join the community on Slack.
