Hi all,

Some weeks ago now, I blogged that I've adopted the open source NHaml project over at GitHub, I'm now an administrator. I also mentioned that I was looking to get an initial release out sometime in December. Since then I've been beavering away at the thing, we're now most of the way through December, it feels like it's time for a status update.

In this post, I'll be talking a little about the project as I picked it up, lessons learned in my first baby steps adopting an established OSS proect, the decision to go with a (almost) rewrite, TDD and why I feel this is important stuff, and a few other odds and ends.

Incidentally, I in no way whatsoever mean to sound like I'm having a dig at previous contributors to the project, the stuff I'm putting into the project now owes massively to these earlier contributors, I'm trying to evolve as many of their existing ideas as I can. 

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I had an interesting chat with a few colleagues of mine yesterday, and it was on the subject of the "front end dev". The two colleagues in question were a designer, and a good all-round developer, each with 10 years experience in their respective fields. So they've been through the mill.

The subject of JQuery came up, and after a little rumination on things, we kinda agreed that what the web needs, is a new specialism, the front-end developer. So were we right? If you're a dev, is now the time to go for that niche and specialise, if you're a designer, are you going to have to get used to your finely crafted CSS getting butchered by some nightmarish hybrid creature, neither a designer or a fully fledged dev? (A were-dev?)

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