JJ Allaire has courageously bet, time and time again, on the cutting edge of technologies. In doing so, he has not only benefited from the fertile rains but has often times himself been the rainmaker. He has, to a great degree, democratized development on the web by bringing the power to create interactive web applications to a wider audience than those select few who had access to both a shell account and Unix knowledge. ColdFusion was a platform by the web and for the web, and its adoption revolutionized programming ‘for the web’ as its own worthy pursuit. This story also resolutely validates the idea that by creating tools for developers at the beginning of a time of revolutionary change in technology, one could not only validate the tools but also help stage the unfolding narrative as one with many participants.

Over the past few years, JJ has invested his time in developing the RStudio IDE, including the supporting frameworks and tools. Even before his involvement in the software industry, JJ fostered his love for how data could influence the world around him as a Political science major. After seeing how “the definitive” environment for interactive data analysis had not yet been built, he set about building it – and for that we here at DataScience.LA thank him.

Suffice it to say, I personally think quite highly of JJ. It is with great pleasure that we are releasing this conversation, the final video of our useR! 2014 interview series this week – especially while we’re gearing up for Strata. I hope you enjoy!