It’s been a while since I first worked on a book with O’Reilly in 1997. That book was a practical guide to data structures and algorithms, a subject that, for the most part, had been defined many years before by some of the early giants of computer science (Dijkstra, Hoare, Knuth, to name a few). By comparison, I’ve been able to witness the rapid evolution of the subject of this book from the front lines, and I have had the good
fortune to help refine it myself while working as a web developer at one of the largest web applications in the world, Yahoo!. Web developers have a fascinating role.

We work just as closely with user experience
designers as with engineers, and sometimes we’re the designers, too. In many ways, we are guardians of the user experience as a web design goes from its mockup to its implementation. But we also have to write exceptionally good code that performs well in the challenging environment of web browsers. Today, more than ever, engineers recognize that web development must be carried out with the same rigor as other types of
software development.

Developing Large Web Applications