jcampbelly

I really enjoyed Marvel Heroes and was sad to see Gazillion go under. It seemed like the relationship between Marvel and Gaz was really tight because of all of the coordinated events based on the movies, the art/design/fighting styles. And I was always really impressed with the "fun factor" as compared to D3, the performance was really solid, and the developers seemed really into it. Most of us were surprised to see that game evaporate in a month or so, and it seemed like it happened basically because of bad business practices that seemed to have come about only after you left.

Can you tell us anything more about how that went down? Are there any important lessons to take away from a game development or business point of view?

First, the questions:

• Do you have any early information for us on the API you envision for the 'problem set' engine at khanacademy? I'm interested to see how a problem and its success criteria is defined, the "quiz" specification format, how the results are stored, etc.
• Do you plan to release the problem set tools as an independent library?
• Do you think your work with khanacademy will eventually help other teaching projects like Moodle and codingbat?
• Has your work on unit testing tools given you special insight into how you plan to approach problem sets for khanacademy? I imagine testing software has significant parallels with testing rote human knowledge (at least).
• Do you plan to do anything like WolframAlpha's API for handling human input?
• Since visualization/graphing are so key to teaching, are you going to be using flot or Processing.js for the visualization/graphical elements? Do you foresee any visualization libraries being used or improved as a result of their integration with khanacademy?

Secondly, sir, you are a true hacker, a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you. I've been designing and coding web sites since '97, but in the time since I discovered jQuery, I have begun and completed more projects than in all of the years before. It has made my life easier, my work more productive and creative, and given me far greater insight into pure JavaScript. But that's only how your work has affected me.

• The effect your work has had in unifying the behavior of browsers has liberated an entire generation of web developers.
• You have built a thriving and extensive open source community around jQuery, which is a heroic feat for any project.
• You listen, respond and participate with the community of people who use your software. Whether it's at jquery, twitter, reddit or hacker news, I am always surprised to see your composed and qualified replies in some very deeply nested comments.
• You are voluntarily moving on from a dream job at a company that has a demonstrable history of leaping improvements to the technological foundations of the internet to contribute to a non-profit project that has the potential to change human education on a global scale.

EDIT: Formatting