David Jardin is one of the people who are absolutely inseparable from Joomla.
In addition to his professional activity as a developer, he regularly contributes to checking the security of the CMS.
He's honoured to share his experience with us and explain why it's important to participate in the development of our magnificent tool.

Thank you for participating in this interview! Could you tell us a little about your extension(s)?

Over the years I’ve developed countless custom extensions for client projects for a wide range of requirements. I also published a bunch of extensions for public use, however none of them are currently listed in the JED as they are targeting rather special usecases.

So what came first for you: contributing to Joomla or developing extensions? Could you take us through your Joomla journey?

My journey started in the good old Mambo days. I was looking for a job that I could do during school and as I knew my way around in web technologies, I started a small web development business. I started using Mambo and quickly started to support other users in a bunch of support forums. Each and every time I stumbled upon a question that I couldn’t answer, I dived into the code and thereby quickly gained knowledge - and the more knowledge I had, the more complex projects I could do business-wise.

Slowly but surely, both sides of my involvement grew: I got more involved in the Joomla community (german translation team member, community leadership team member, JSST member, JoomlaDay germany organizer etc) and also further established my business.

Why did you start contributing to Joomla?

When I started it was just for fun: I enjoyed helping others and seeing my post number grow and grow.

Later, I had two main motivations that kept me contributing until today:

1. personal development: I learned so much because of my contributions, made many friends, traveled around the globe and all of that helped my to grow not only as a developer but also as a human being
2. sustainability: helping Joomla to stay relevant as a project will also mean that my business will stay relevant. It’s a super obvious thing.

At the moment you are a team leader in Joomla’s Security Strike Team. Why did you choose this team? 

It’s a super interesting topic and one where I have the impression that my knowledge has the greatest positive effect on the project.

Would you advise other extension developers to contribute as well? Why?

Definitely! You’ll learn a lot, both personally and professionally!

In your opinion, how does Joomla benefit from extension developers contributing?

Joomla is purely volunteer driven - every single person counts and especially development-related tasks aren’t easy for the project to handle as the skillset required is often rather special. Therefore, having more extension developers contribute could really boost the project!