Oaktowne. Javascript city. This image was originally made for some t-shirts.Did you know that Oakland is the home to many well-known javascript programmers?
Oakland is especially well-represented in the node.js community, with Isaac Schlueter,Mikeal Rogers, and James Halliday, who all live in Oakland OR THEREABOUTS. Isaacs was formerly the lead of the node.js project and founded npm, the package manager where people publish open source node.js modules. The former cat shepherd of node.js, TJ Fontaine, lives in Alameda.
Compare the most followed programmers in Oakland with San Francisco, which is much more of a ruby town.
There is a weekly meetup on Wednesday nights at 5:30pm http://oaklandjs.com/ and Javascript Study Group at 19:00 at sudoroom. There's a #nerdtracker channel on irc.freenode.net where coordinated hacking on open source modules from cafes and taquerias.
Notable Open Source JavaScripts Born in Oakland
Javascript being called into being at Sudo Room. Dominic Tarr was passing through town that day.concat-map was completely written high up a tree in Mosswood Park.
The browserify v2 refactor was largely written at Awaken Cafe and outside by The Oak.
npm was originally written in Mountain View. However, it was subsequently largely rewritten in Oakland.
node_redis was written on Euclid Ave in Adams Point.
JavaScript-Focused Companies in Oakland
Couch One, the company behind couchdb, used to have its headquarters on Washington Street before it merged with membase and moved to Mountain View.
StackVM, the company behind Browserling, Testling, Testling-CI, and Substack, is 1/2 head quartered in Oakland.
The headquarters of npm, Inc. are in the De Domenico Building, in OscarPlatz.
A small animal learns JavaScript at SudoRoom / OmniCommons in Temescal
Places to write Javascript in Oakland
A good hack spot has several important qualitites that vary based on what kind of javascript you want to write. Some qualities worth considering are comfiness, wifi coverage, outlet availability, availability of nourishment (ideally tacos), the presence of coffee, and how late the hack spot is open.
- sudo room (comfy, wifi, outlets, mate available and coffee is not far away outside, open until super late)
- produce pro (wifi, outlets, tacos, coffee)
- high up in trees (comfy, quiet) It's a good idea to bring a thermos full of your own coffee.
- cafes (coffee, usually wifi, food, outlets)
