Acknowledgements

Before thanking anybody else, as a former school topper, I would like to express my boundless gratitude for the teachers who taught me at F. G. Boys Public School, Jhelum. I have no words to express my gratitude for their services considering how horrendously they were being treated as teachers by the despicable leadership in Pakistan. MSc Physics, MSc Mathematics, MSc Chemistry, and biology educated teachers who were commuting on bicycles or 100cc motorbikes, yet managed to turn me into a school-topping student who despite participating in 4 or 5 extracurricular activities was able to learn dense, dense subjects very well.

Now to some astoundingly outstanding to notable performers since leaving school and college.

Rehan Ahmed — MVP of Teaching, Gold Star Rated Teacher.

Despite being fully consumed by nothing less than a raging inferno for piston engines, machines, and airplanes, I had to enroll in a degree program in computer science and engineering as my spectacularly insightful, mathematics-educated father decided that studying mechanical engineering would be detrimental to my financial success. Owing to that raging and all-consuming inferno for machines, for the first year and a half, I miserably failed to develop any interest in the proceedings in the computer science institution. The faculty members who were proving perfectly adequate for other students simply could not hold the attention of an individual who was always busy visiting the websites of various car manufacturers instead of studying computing works and doing his assignments.

Having failed to learn any subject even to hardly acceptable levels during the first three semesters and completely failed the mandatory Data Structures course, even if by just 2 marks, I had to retake the Data Structures course during the summer of 1998. While attending the repeat course in the summer of 98, I found myself under the tutelage of an almost otherwordly and utterly mesmerizing personality named Rehan Ahmad. Mr. Rehan Ahmad during those two months exuded incomparable levels of infectious enthusiasm for the subject — in fact so infectious that he managed to not only resuscitate the gasping soul of a bright student in me but also elicit an unrivaled performance from an individual initially profoundly uninterested in the proceedings. Never before in my life had I met an individual exuding such enthusiasm for the subject matter, eagerness for sharing it with his charges, and unparalleled commitment to the task at hand, nor have I since then found another individual, instructor or otherwise, with such qualities. Having spent 16 or so years in the educational system, I have an inkling that the quest to find another individual with such qualities would prove an exercise in futility. During the 3 years of the officially designated degree term, for whatsoever I managed to learn or whatever little interest I managed to develop in the C++ programming language and code refinement techniques, only this individual deserves the credit for ensuring that I would leave the institute with some interest in at least a couple of aspects of computer science.

When it comes to Rehan Ahmed‘s performance, the unrivalled levels of enthusiasm and energy exuded by the person were not the only two aspects of his performance that saved from complete ruin. Our lectures at FAST—NUCES used to, and probably still, last for 2 hours. Rehan Ahmed, whom I used to address as Rehan Bhai after we got on talking terms after the course, before commencing the affairs or usual proceedings as a teacher of Data Structures, asked all of those who had decided to take the repeat course to sit in a short quiz which he had devised to test that how poorly knowledgable in programming and data structures affaris were the enrollees in that repeat course of data structures. All of the enrollees failed to write a simple Swap function as none of us under his tutelage in that course knew how to pass values by address. Upon becoming aware of the dire situation of his students, Rehan Ahmed sahab completely changed the schedule and turned the whole of the course into a proper programming boot camp. Instead of the usual 2 hours long lectures, for the whole duration of the course, he continued to hold lectures lasting more than 3 hours and 30 minutes, probably nearing quarter to four hours long lectures. I have never, not once, seen another person in Pakistan willing to invest almost double the effort, both in terms of time and energy, without the directives of the dean or head of department. Of his volition, he decided to devise a proper plan to at least attepmt to rescue the souls who had failed to not only learn data structrues but even simple programming properly. I continue to consider it a proper sacrifice on his part that while working on peanuts, which used to be a norm in Pakistan even at such institutions, he decided to invest almost double the time than what had been demanded of him. He could have proceeded without testing his students first and placed the blame on the shoulders of teachers who were assigned the task of teaching programming concepts, instead, he showed up with a quiz, and then revised the whole of the schedule to elicit at least an acceptable performance from all of his students. He showed up with a raging desire to impart knowledge, and his selfless act of sacrificing his time and investing so much energy proved outstanding for me, as he managed to turn me into a perfectly capable programmer within a period of two months. The university and government have never rewarded the individual for his heroic act of such a selfless behavior. However, he has managed to become my personal hero and favorite in the process.

Sheeraz Fazal — Excellent Teaching Assistant

Sheeraz Fazal Sahab turned out to be a stand-out Teaching Assistant at FAST—NUCES and a stellar team lead at Vroom Technologies. I will forever remain thankful to him for advising me to read The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup and more works on C++. Considering that he now resides in the US, depending on his availability, if a professor in that area would like to hire him as a TA (Teaching Assistant), then I offer my unreserved endorsement. During my days at the CS institution, which now enjoys the status of a university, I failed to meet another individual in that capacity willing to take the responsibility as seriously and enthusiastically as he did. It has more to do with the peanuts that Pakistani institutions offer, nevertheless, Sheeraz Fazal, despite being on peanuts, outperformed all other teaching assistants when it comes to honoring his responsibilities. I still consider him a spectacular professional. As I have not gotten the chance to work with him since 2002, hence, I can only hope that he still tries to meet his spectacularly high standards.

Fraz Nayyar

While working at FaujiSoft, Islamabad, I met a spectacularly well-informed and sensationally polite graduate of FAST–NUCES, Islamabad, named Fraz Nayyar. As I had left FAST, Lahore, with spectacularly little knowledge in computing matters, hence, discussions with Fraz eventually made me realize how phenomenally ill-informed I was back in 2002 as a software engineering graduate. I will forever remain thankful to this person for eventually making me realize that I needed to study tons of more material before finally calling myself a software engineering professional. A remarkably well-rounded graduate of FAST–NUCES, Islamabad, Mr. Fraz Nayyar: profound gratitude from the recesses of my brain for making me realize how poorly informed an individual I was back then. Stellar Mr. Fraz Nayyar.

Professor Richard Nordquist

Starting probably in the year 2010 or 2011, I started to follow Professor Richard Nordquist’s blog on what was then about.com. Reading the content written by the professor and the essays and short notes he used to choose for sharing with his readers from the large body of literature that English authors have produced over the last 500 years or so was a remarkably gripping, exciting, and uplifting experience. I have been reading content on the Internet for over 20 years now; however, exceedingly rarely have I found an author and his selections so outstandingly delightful. It was an absolute pleasure having Professor Richard Nordquist as a regular expert contributor on about.com.

Without Proper Guidance, The Road to Web Development is Replete with Potholes

An Abundance of Pitfalls and Incomplete Signage Await the Unwary.

When I made the switch to browser-based UI development in 2006, I had never used CSS and HTML before. Considering that the ascendance of Google had by then probably surpassed the expectations of even the most optimistic of investors, I had also not remained immune from overreliance on the search giant for knowledge acquisition. In retrospect, I probably lost over a year trying to stitch together acceptable interfaces and functional JavaScript applications by relying on instant answers, which rarely come with either the cautionary notes or references to requisite information to utilize that morsel of information correctly. As JavaScript provides ample control over arranging DOM elements, therefore, to compensate for the lack of information, the brute force mechanism remained the standard approach during that first year.

Although the realization to adopt a better strategy to gain proficiency in a new technology took much longer than I would like to admit, nonetheless, after a year or so of trial and error approach to synthesizing acceptable interfaces and applications, I eventually concluded that without a thorough reading of the CSS standard, UI development using CSS would remain a continuous struggle. However, despite perusing the CSS 2.1 standard, I would have found expanding on the knowledge acquired through that reading alone a laborious and burdensome task without the willingness, regardless of their motivation or reasons, of the following individuals to share their knowledge with the masses.

1. Christian Heilmann

   With the online publication where I first discovered Mr. Heilmann’s work employing word count as the barometer to ascertain the value of the accepted works, authors must feel awash with the temptation to inflate the word count by digressing. To these authors, the editing phase involving judicious retention and elimination of content must resemble the ever-so delicate balancing act of traversing successfully a patch of perilously thin sheet of ice.

   However, without ever making the reader feel burdened with unnecessary and irrelevant musings, within an article, Mr. Heilmann transformed me from a 3rd class JavaScript programmer to an acceptable or above-average JavaScript programmer. From an individual whose HTML content used to resemble a spaghetti of HTML and JavaScript to a person fully aware of the separation of concerns and capable of writing semantic HTML without the signs of functionality contaminating the document.

2. Louis Lazaris

   With the phenomenon which I have termed “The Curse of Google” creeping into all sorts of written materials, Louis has so far managed to buck the trend, at least in the paid works. Although I have only read a book written for SitePoint and an article written for the Adobe Developer Connection, however, I found the works not only quite informative but also meeting the expected standards of quality. Whether Louis plans to continue to adhere to personal standards, I certainly can not say — I have yet to develop the ability to read people’s minds — however, based on whatsoever I have read thus far, I undeniably associate comprehensive yet devoid of digressions works with Louis Lazaris.

3. Craig Buckler

   Although Craig rarely indulges in wordplay, sprinklings of which I quite enjoy while reading any type of material, keeping the articles short and focused, however, regardless of the length of the posts, I have certainly learnt a few new techniques from his posts that regularly appear on SitePoint.com. I would highly recommend Craig’s articles and books to any novice front-end developer.

4. Heydon Pickering

   Although I’ve only read an article written by the fellow, and I undoubtedly disagree with its introductory paragraph — vive la différance, as stated by Mr. Pickering in the article — however, except for the first paragraph, I found the approach to styling the documents discussed by Heydon the perfect methodology for utilizing the already available anchors. If I had to suggest an article to a neophyte on how to style an HTML document, I would certainly ask the novice to read Mr. Pickering’s views.

5. Chris Coyier

   As Chris Coyier probably writes for the widest audience possible, therefore, on occasions, the prose starts to feel too casual, or overly diluted, for the adult audience, nonetheless, on many an occasion, tips and tricks shared by Chris have allowed me to focus on the actual work instead of perusing the CSS standard or investing time and effort in trial and error approach to find a solution. Considering that I have benefitted from the material produced or work done by Chris many times, therefore, I would like to apologize for the first couple of lines.