About

Hey there!

My name is Yaakov Chaikin. By day, I am a software developer. I mostly specialize in full stack web and distributed development.

I also teach Web Development at Johns Hopkins University and have co-authored a book Core Servlets and Javaserver Pages: Advanced Technologies.

I’ve been doing software development for over 20 years (professionally) and still love it! There is something so exciting about making stuff that people use!

In 2004, I was asked to be a substitute for a graduate level course on Web Development in Java at Johns Hopkins University. I accepted and was hooked on teaching ever since, eventually taking over a couple of the web development courses in the program.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to bring my teaching to hundreds of thousands of students through Coursera.org.

Over 1 MILLION students have taken my courses! It’s hard to imagine!

Both of my courses HTML, CSS, and Javascript for Web Developers (free) and Single Page Web Applications with AngularJS (free) made it to #1 Top Rated Course spot on Coursera.org.

I have the NICEST students!

I am also an open source developer. My most recent project is a release of a testing framework called MongoUnit, which makes testing Java Spring Boot based data access logic super easy for developers. Check it out at mongoUnit.org.