Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my blog about the most popular JavaScript library in the world – jQuery! My name is Mike Cherveny. I am a senior pursuing a degree in Computer Science with a minor in Economics at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio (Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn). When tasked with choosing the topic of the blog I knew I wanted to write about something I am passionate about that would also provide useful information to the reader (you!). Ultimately I decided to write a blog about web programming. Programming has always been a passion of mine, from class work and personal projects to multiple internships in the software engineering field I have always been fascinated with expanding my programming knowledge.

Almost completely by chance, most of my experience has focused on web development. I was placed on the Web Server Development Team at my first internship at Company A and ever since then it has stuck. One of the main topics I will focus on in this blog is how I have used jQuery in the professional world – I can’t wait to share my experiences with you! I have had both the experience of being able to utilize jQuery as much as I want on projects to, only having access to vanilla JavaScript on other projects. These contrasting experiences have given me an appreciation for how much easier things can be in jQuery! It has also inspired what will become a running theme in this blog – comparing the process of doing the same thing in jQuery and JavaScript. One of the most frustrating things about programming exclusively with vanilla Javascript is being forced to come up with a long and complicated work around for what can be done in jQuery with a few simple lines. Before I dive too deep into what this blog will entail, I think I should go over some jQuery basics (feel free to skip right over this if you are familiar with the library).

jQuery was developed by John Resig and first released on August 26^th, 2006. The first thing to mention is despite some common misconceptions, jQuery is not actually a programming language! It is nothing more than a JavaScript library. According to jQuery’s own website (jquery.com) jQuery is “a fast, small, and feature-rich JavaScript library”. jQuery is open sourced and maintained by the jQuery Team. The real power of jQuery comes from its ability to simplify the web development process – but more on that later!

Over the coming weeks I invite you to join me as I discuss everything and anything jQuery. Topics will include (but are not limited to): the numerous benefits of jQuery, examples of how I have utilized jQuery to solve real world business and programming problems, how to write unit tests for jQuery, the unique features that makes jQuery one of the most powerful web programming languages. I hope you enjoy following my blog, please feel free to leave feedback in the form of comments below each post!