About Me
My name (as you may already have guessed) is Ben Alman, but most people call me by my nickname, “Cowboy.” I’m a thirty-something web developer living and working in the Boston area. I’m happily married to a wonderful woman and we have two very crazy, but very awesome ragdoll cats.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or just want to say “Hi.” And if you want to send me a donation to show your appreciation for my work, I’d really appreciate it!
Recent Photos
Featured Projects
jQuery Projects
Other Projects
Recent Project Updates
- jQuery hashchange event v1.3 07-22-2010
- jQuery hashchange event 1.3pre beta test 07-06-2010
- JavaScript debug v0.4 06-24-2010
- jQuery queueFn plugin v0.4 06-21-2010
- jQuery equalizeBottoms plugin v1.5 03-24-2010
Recent News
I’m not sure where or when it happened, but at some point the JavaScript community decided that multiple, individual var statements were superfluous, instead opting for a single, combined var statement with a comma-separated list of variable declarations and assignments whenever possible.
Just in case you don’t know what I mean, I’ll illustrate:
// Single, combined var statement.
var foo = 1,
bar = 2;
// Multiple, individual var statements.
var foo = 1;
var bar = 2;
I’ve asked a number of talented JavaScript programmers why they prefer a single, combined var statement with multiple declarations and assignments to multiple, individual var statements, and the only responses I’ve been able to get seem entirely subjective:
- Multiple var statements are superfluous.
- Multiple var statements are noobish.
- Combined var statements look better.
While I can’t argue with the last point, in JavaScript, multiple var statements aren’t superfluous and they aren’t noobish. They reduce the effort it takes to maintain code.
- Categories:
- News Flash: Semicolons Required in JavaScript 04-16-2012
- Introducing Grunt 03-30-2012
- A few awesome board/card/iOS games 02-24-2012
- Battlefield 3, Battlelog Hacks 10-30-2011
- 2011 jQuery Summit, here I come! 10-18-2011
Featured Music
Here’s a collection of songs that I’ve either written, produced, or played on. Enjoy!