ADDY OSMANI
ADDY OSMANI is a Senior Staff Software Engineer and Engineering Manager at Google, working with the Chrome and Developer Relations teams. Browser teams may seem unreachable or as if they are dictating a developer’s experience, but Addy wants to change that perception and provide a platform where everyone can get involved in building the future web. The Chrome team strives to understand from developers what is missing from the browser. “It’s important for the Chrome team to help others get involved. I remember being terrified about reaching out to browser vendors,” Addy says. “I want to show people how easy it is to contribute and help lower the bar for bringing those ideas to the platform.” It’s become easier to pitch ideas, and it’s as simple as having conversations in the WICG (Web Platform Incubator Community Group) Discourse group. Standards and browser engineers there are always happy to help developers get involved. “Babel started as a transpiler for modern JavaScript and now plays a key role in enabling developers to prototype new proposals for the JavaScript language, have a voice in TC39 (Technical Committee 39) meetings, and help shape the future web,” Addy explains. By proposing new APIs (application programming interfaces) for speed, community member contributions led to the Preload spec from Yoav Weiss, which helped deliver assets for interactive experiences more quickly. Addy and Yoav are working on a new API called Priority Hints for giving developers even more control over how browsers prioritize loading content. Though his life was enriched with computers at a young age, it was the welcoming nature of Dave Methvin from jQuery that led Addy to open source. Addy explains: “jQuery docs were my first open source contribution. Now, my job at Google is to create relationships within the developer community that make meaningful impacts to the web. Community is important to me. I wouldn’t have been able to get involved in open source if it wasn’t for others giving me the opportunity to stand on their shoulders.”
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“Community is important to me. I wouldn’t have been able to get involved in open source if it wasn’t for others giving me the opportunity to stand on their shoulders.”