Movin’ to Palm: An interview with developer now Palm employee Dave Balmer

While he is known as the Wobble Words guy, Dave Balmer is also a well known guy in dev circles, javascript circles, and now Palm itself. Recently Dave was taken up by the mothership and has accepted a job at Palm as a developer for the Mojo SDK. He was kind enough to take a moment to chat with us about his life before Palm and what he is looking forward to most now that he is part of the company.

The full interview is after the break.

Hey Dave, thanks for taking the time out of your day to speak with me. So, first things first…who are you and what are you doing here?

I’m a software engineer, part time game developer and gadget geek. I’ve been in the webOS community since early last year, and put out a couple of apps (Wobble Words and Poker Drops) while working a day job. I’m a huge fan (literally) of Palm and webOS, and am really jazzed because I start there next week.

What am I doing here? I’m not sure, but it must be a slow news day! [Ed. - Nah, we just like you Dave]

So you are part of the Palm family now. Very exciting. What will you be doing over there?

I’ll be working on improving Mojo SDK for webOS, which is a set of tools for developers who build apps. It’s also the framework Palm uses to make the built-in apps like email and chat. I’m really excited and can’t wait to see what cool stuff we can make available to app developers.

What did you do before joining Palm?

I started programming when I was six. Back then the idea of having a computer in your home was a new thing. My professional career started at 13, and I developed desktop apps until I saw the web for the first time. From there, I switched to web development and rode the Internet “bubble” in a lot of startups and then started at Yahoo! in 2004.

I got hooked on mobile apps when the iPhone was introduced, but was unhappy with how Apple treated early web app developers. I fiddled a bit with their native SDK, but didn’t like it much. webOS to me is exactly what I was hoping Apple was going to do with the iPhone but didn’t. Palm gets this whole Internet thing like no one else.

For the past five years I’ve been working on cross-platform JavaScript libraries. This started with a prototype I made while working at Yahoo! called “jSugar”. I’ve been addicted to making JavaScript frameworks ever since. My latest is an open source project called “Jo” (http://grrok.com/jo) which just came out last week. Jo is based on the framework I made for my webOS games, but much more refined.

What are you looking forward to the most with your new job?

The list of features I want to help add to Mojo is too huge to sum up. What I’m looking forward to most is taking the developer tools to a new level. Better tools mean better apps, which means more die-hard webOS fans, which means more sales, which means more cool gadgets with webOS on them. So really, I guess it all comes back to gadgets: shiny, yummy gadgets.

Do you think being a game developer for the webOS system helped you land the job? How so?

Everyone I talked with at Palm knew about Wobble Words and seemed to appreciate the effort I spent pushing the limits of the SDK. While the game definitely got their attention, I think Palm was more interested in my habit of designing and building JavaScript frameworks. But yeah, being the “Wobble Words” guy did help.

Do you plan on still developing Wobble Words, or is that against the rules? How about new applications?

Don’t worry, I’ve been told it’s fine to continue developing Wobble Words and Poker Drops. New applications will depend more on my available time than anything else, so we’ll see how it goes.

What is your favorite aspect of webOS and what do you hope to improve with it?

My favorite unsung feature is “synergy”, that thing which keeps all your contacts and emails and chats all synced up from everywhere you want. What I want to improve most is the SDK itself. I want to open up more features to developers while making it even easier to make great apps.

What is the first thing you plan on doing when you arrive at Palm HQ for your first day at work?

I’m gonna grab a giant coffee (I’m a night owl and new Palm hire orientation is first thing in the morning). After that, I’m going to find the Palm developer relations folks and give ‘em a pat on the back for putting up with developers like me who constantly barraged them with questions and feature requests. Now that I’m on the team, I get to help make some of the very things I was requesting as an app developer. So cool.

Well, I think that about covers it. Thank you again for your time, and please say hello to Adora for me.

No problem, I love talking about webOS!

Congratulations once again Dave!!