What I bring to the WordPress codex is a gift for coding, a love of language, and an admiration for software documentation that's accurate and easy to understand.
I've been plying my trade as a programmer since 1981, I've been working on the web since the mid 1990s, and I've been using WordPress as my primary web development platform since 2007.
I produce websites by handcrafting customized WordPress themes and plugins for my clients.
I love elegant code. I'm very happy generating websites from separate channels of content, markup, style, and behavior, and get irritated when they're mixed together in an unmanageable cement. (I'm not a fan of the de facto WordPress coding standard that mixes HTML and PHP in a messy mash, and prefer to separate markup and logic cleanly in my own code.) I unapologetically use the Allman style of curly braces because it's easier for me to read, write, and proofread indented blocks with both braces aligned.
I value JavaScript but use it as sparingly as possible and only after ensuring that a website is fully functional without it. (I look forward to that distant time when JavaScript is universally supported across all platforms and in all scenarios so I can use it more freely.) With help from Tia Rayl I wrote & edited the JavaScript Bible, 7th Edition (Wiley, 2010). It's both a great desk reference and a fat, fun read.
In addition to software I write nonfiction and science fiction and play ancient Zimbabwean music on mbira. With my family I live on the edge of wilderness in the mountains of British Columbia.
See you on the net~
Paul Novitski
Juniper Webcraft