The Cutting-Edge of the Web with Ada Rose Cannon

As developer advocate and principal engineer at Samsung, Ada Rose Cannon works on the cutting-edge of Web technologies. From helping promote advanced web features like progressive web apps, web virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), to contributing to open source projects that help developers build great web applications.

As co-chair of the W3C Immersive Web Working Group, Ada is helping to bring high-performance VR and AR to the open Web, with APIs to build fully immersive experiences that work with almost any browser-connected VR headset. Her projects on Glitch range from fun games to useful utilities, including the following:

**Ada-Game-Engin**e A WebVR game, built in a week. It's a 3rd-person RPG that enables you to explore the world around you by interacting with text or by moving around the 3D environment.

**Adalytics-Liv**e An auto-updating page hit counter that doesn't use cookies or tracking to provide web stats for a project.

**Earthy-Cours**e The Japanese animated fantasy film character Totoro in a rainy, evening-time WebVR scene.

Shipping Beats Perfection #

Ada has always been exploring what's possible on the Web, whether researching and discovering new web tech and trends at FTLabs or working with coveted creators while at PlayStation. A core part of this work has involved building short-life prototypes, leading to an appreciation of the value of shipping - getting stuff out into the world for people to use and provide feedback on, rather than endless optimization behind closed doors.

"Stuff doesn't have to be perfect," says Ada, "it just needs to work for people." And you can see this approach in action in her write-up "How I built a game in a week". It walks you through the resources, tools, and compromises needed to rapidly create a WebVR game in such a short time-frame.

It's courageous developers like Ada, who not only try things out but who share their code and document their process that helps us all appreciate, that everyone, no matter their skill level or experience, have to make pragmatic choices when coding. By enabling us all to understand how impressive projects really get made, this helps alleviate feelings of impostor syndrome and frustration in others just starting out. Ada's work inspires by making it feel like we can all learn something new and experience the cutting-edge of the Web.

You can follow Ada on Twitter, learn more about her on her site, or see what she creates next on Glitch.