IT and Patience

There are a dozens of good reasons to start a website.  You've probably thought of some of the typical reasons: establishing your brand, always open for business, gain credibility, improved communication, automated customer service, etc.  These are all good reasons but there are other important reasons which don't get enough pub.  Here are 5 smarter reasons to start a website.

5) It Doesn't Cost As Much As You Think

A typical website needs two things: hosting (space on a server where your site will live) and a domain name (the site's address).   You can get both of these for less than $100 per year.  I've had good experience with FatCow and Yahoo Small Business.  They have tools which make building a website quick and easy.  If you can use Microsoft Word, then you can build a website.  Don't spend a lot of money on a fancy-pants designer at first.  Use other free tools like Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.  Get a Google Adwords coupon code and drive some traffic to your site.

4) Showcase Your Work

I love the part in Office Space where Bob Slydell asks Tom Smykowski, "What would you say ya do here?" and Tom goes off about how he takes the specs from the customers to the engineers and has people skills.  Old Smykowski's problem is that no one knows what he does and therefore no one values his work.  Don't let this happen to you!  You do good work so you should show it off.  Prospects want to see that you have a track record of success.

This tip applies to you all working the 9-5 as well.  Start a blog or a forum and engage people within the company.   Openly discuss your challenges and ideas.  It may take a little effort but soon your boss will be asking everyone to participate and you can take credit for the whole thing :)  Don't violate any company/confidentiality policies though.

3) Be Contact Friendly

Ok, this one is kind of obvious but it still surprises me how many businesses don't have a website.  A business not having a website is like a person not having a cell phone.  Don't be that guy!

2) Content is King

Whether you own a trendy salon downtown or you write tax software in your spare time, the key to gaining clients is to extend your sphere of influence.  You have to participate in your community and the most effective way to do that is to write interesting, relative content.  Start a blog, forum, or wiki.  If what you have to say is valuable/engaging/entertaining, the audience will come and you'll become an expert in their minds.

1) Test Out an Idea Quickly

Ever have a bolt of genius hit in the shower in the morning?  Many people have good ideas but either 1) never follow up on them, or 2) spend a bunch of time/money on the idea without any certainty it will be successful.  A better alternative is to set up a quick website and see what kind of interest you generate.  Are people willing to leave their email address in exchange for more information?  If not, that may be a sign that your idea isn't as brilliant as you thought.  On the other hand, if you get a ton of hits and good feedback; then you can confidently invest further resources.  Don't worry about making the site perfect, just get it in front of some eyeballs and measure the interest.

Chrome has V8 engine

A couple months ago I wrote about how Google may be pushing its new Chrome browser by making changes to google.com.  Having done a lot of work in JavaScript recently, it got me wondering how Chrome intended to actually speed things up.  It turns out the key is their new JavaScript engine, V8.

V8 is the code name of the JavaScript virtual machine shipped with Chrome.  It is named V8 because it is supposed to be powerful like and 8 cylinder car engine.  I did some googling and found a video where the V8 tech lead, Lars Bak, explains how it is fast.

Why is V8 fast?

There are primarily three techniques V8 to improve the speed of execution of JavaScript in Chrome:
1. Hidden Objects
If two objects of the same type are created, a third, hidden object is created which links the two child objects.  The key reason for doing this is that it helps generate efficient machine code.

2. Dynamically generated machine code
When V8 parses your JavaScript, it doesn't generate an intermediate byte code as most engines do.  Instead, it generates native machine code (assembly).  This is much faster since there is no interpretation step.

3. Precise garbage collection
Lars says that memory is reclaimed incrementally so there are minimal pauses or hiccups in the browser when using a complex JavaScript application.

When is it not fast? 

As Lars explains in a MSDN Expert to Expert video, V8 is optimized for the most common JavaScript programming patterns and operations.  If your JavaScript program uses infrequent operations, V8 could experience very slow performance.  An example of an operation which could slow things down is deleting/re-adding object properties.  V8 is standards compliant, so it will work but it might not be fast.  "If you write that kind of code, we want to penalize you", mentions Lars with a chuckle.  He also goes on to say that this is how it works in the initial version and it could be changed in future version.

The Verdict

V8 and Chrome definitely sound cool.  Lars doesn't strike me as an architecture astronaut so the future looks bright.  However, the technology is so new that I wouldn't yet recommend it for most users.  Honestly I haven't tried it out yet myself.  I'm pretty happy with Firefox and especially all the extensions that are available for Firefox.  I am planning to run my web app's test cases in Chrome in the near future... I'll be sure to post the results.

Bonus JS Architecture Talk

Can't get enough?  Check out this talk given by Ryan Dahl at the 2009 European JavaScript Conference.  Ryan describes NodeJS, a server-side JavaScript platform built on V8 which features purely asynchronous I/O and event loop concurrency.  The main program never waits on I/O... giggity.

Thursday's New York Times' Decoder article struck a cord with me.  In the article, Sergey Brin defends Google's stance on non-search-related topics like scanning out-of-print books, Microsoft, network neutrality, and Chrome.  Google's motto is to "not be evil" but lately I have to question their methods.

Chrome is clearly something that Google is pushing hard.  Google.com is my homepage and I've frequently seen the ads pushing me to try Chrome because it is so much faster.  I use Firefox (v3.5.3) and lately I've noticed that google.com is much slower to load.  In the last few days, it seems like the page is loading differently; the logo and the search box appear immediately and the other links 'fade in' a few seconds later, like after I move my mouse.

I suppose it's possible that Google thinks they are making improvements to google.com.  Maybe it is a better design in the long run.  I'm not sure I buy that though.  Right now it is clunky and annoying.  It seems more likely to me that Google is incorporating fancy (and unnecessary) Javascript into their site and don't care if it runs slowly on Firefox.  After all, supposedly Chrome's big advantage is its Javascript performance, right?  Is this the right way for a company to push its agenda?

On this subject, I say ok.   As a website developer, Javascript performance is important to me and this may be Google's way of forcing the issue.  The point is that there clearly is an agenda here which needs to be scrutinized and shouldn't be overlooked because of their friendly motto.