NgColombia: Interview with speaker Kenneth Christiansen
- 🅰 What is it that you like the most about Angular?
Well that is an easy one: The community! I am more of a web guy that an Angular guy, but what always amazed me about the Angular community is how friendly and inclusive it is!
About Angular itself, I am really excited about the new movements around Ivy and proper Web Components support.
I guess what attracts a lot of people and companies to use angular is that it comes with all batteries included, and is very opinionated. That is great because the web can feel very overwhelming when you come from a native background. So many libraries… but which one to choose? At least with Angular you will mostly choose the one that comes as part of the package.
2. ✈️ Why did you apply as a speaker for NgColombia?
Actually, Sherry List asked me whether I wanted to do a talk with her, and I got super excited when I heard it was in Colombia as I always wanted to go there! I used to live in Latin America, in the North East of Brazil, so I am quite familiar with the Latin culture, warmth and friendship — so totally looking forward to experience that again
3. 💾 Why did you become a developer?
I used to play around with computers when I was a teenager, like installing BeOS, OS/2, Linux and the like, but I never got around to program… Then I had to make a decision about my future, and I choose to study physics and math as that was a lot of fun until I actually started to study that :-) Then I replaced physics with computer science and later added some linguistics on top.
As I am an old-timer, studying computer science was really nerdy at that time (around ‘99), with around 500 guys and only two girls! I liked CS but I didn’t fit in the environment so linguistics became my escape path to stay sane :-)
4. 🥇 What do you feel more proud of in your career?
Getting invited to ngColombia, of course! :-)
Actually, I am not sure. I love setting new goals for myself and I am very proud of having made a difference in the web field, both by contributing to WebKit, Blink, Chromium, standards and the like.
I am proud of having launched a mobile browser which the team and I wrote ourselves based on WebKit. This was the Nokia N9 browser, the first and only MeeGo browser before Nokia went all in on Windows and eventually died. It wouldn’t be worth much today, but when released it got quite good reviews and was quite comparable with the iOS browser at that point.
It was actually the first multi-process WebKit based mobile browser, before Apple started using multi process WebKit for iOS, so that is also something to be proud of :-)
It is also a bit funny thinking that as I created the original WebKit port to Tizen, my Samsung TV at home runs my code whenever I watch Netflix :-) so it also makes me proud that I have code in so many consumer products — whether they are good or bad, like when I have to restart Netflix due to memory leaks
5. 💻 What is your current tech stack? (editors, OS, laptop)
I am currently on a Google Pixelbook where I have a Linux VM container so I can run VSCode and the like. It works really great for me — plus I love the desktop PWA support.
I also have a Windows 10 machine for work and email.
6. 📀 What is your current favourite artist/song/band?
The cantina band from Star Wars, plus the soundtrack of Mario :-) that and a lot of other music, ranging from heavy metal, punk rock to soft pop hits
7. 🚴 What do you do in your leisure time?
I usually work from early morning till quite late, as I work for a US company and have many late meetings, so I don’t have a whole lot of free time on my hands — that and because I have a house and garden to maintain!
I guess you can say that my leisure time is when I travel to events and give talks :-) though I do try to do something fun in the weekends like hang out with friends and family.
Late evening, I can usually sneak in an episode of Netflix or two — I really enjoy watching great series as it helps to disconnect.
8. 🍛 What is your favourite (and least favourite) food?
That is really hard to say — I love food a lot and I love cooking too. I love sushi and I love steak, but I also love vegetables a lot. I am always up for experimenting something new, whether it being giant Tanajura ants in Brazil, jellyfish in China or huge African snails in Nigeria — well, as long as it is safe and customary to eat in the local surroundings, then I am all for trying it :-) Who knows, it might be delicious!
9. ✌️ Why should developers learn Angular?
Well, it is a framework for the web and I am all about the web, so why not? :-) I would love though it people would also try to learn a bit more about how you can do things on the web without using any framework — as that can be very valuable and also really cut down loading time.
10. 👨👩👧👦 What are your views on inclusion and diversity in technology?
Not yet good enough unfortunately, but I see a lot of people trying to change this, so that is great to see. I try to help myself in the capacity that I can, and I always try to be friendly and inclusive.
It is quite hard for me to understand why people can look down at the one sex and not be inclusive, but I also don’t understand who people can bully other people and I have suffered that a lot personally, both in school and in my early career, because I was very different and initially not the most talented developer.
