Coders and projects

[Douglas Loss <dloss@csrlink.net>]

I think Justin Maurer asked a crucial question--who do we have with c/c++
coding experience, and with GNOME/gtk+ experience?  From the answers is looks
 to me as though we have a reasonable core of experience c/c++ programmers,
although most haven't had any exposure to GNOME/gtk+.  To me this suggests
something similar to what David Ridley said, that we can start work on the
core procedures of whatever project we decide to start with just about as
soon as we have a good definition of what it is.  The UI(s) can be kept
separate from that core, so that you can have a GNOME wrapper, a curses
wrapper, an HTML wrapper, etc., just as Justin Bradford mentioned.

This sounds similar to the thoughts many of us were having about gradebooks,
lesson plans, etc.  Does it seem to anyone else that we may be near ready to
start with that?  Bruno Vernier, could you think about the data structures
these programs ought to have?  You don't need to present them in strict XML
with a complete DTD worked out; just a good description of what's needed will
 be enough.  Then David can shoot holes in it :-), by which I mean we can
review and discuss it.  Once we have a good idea of the data we want to work
with and how they're represented, we can think about what kind of operations
we want to be able to do with them.  Once _that's_ done, we should have a
reasonable functional description of the programs we want and can code away.

I admit that I don't have any experience managing a major coding project, but
 I think Justin Bradford does (right?).  Justin, did my sequence above sound
about right, or is there some better way to come up with a framework to work
within?

If you're not an accomplished programmer, don't think that there won't be
anything for you to do in these efforts.  Coming up with the functional
descriptions requires some logical thought but not necessarily programming
expertise.  Testing the programs is also something that benefits from people
not closely involved in their development.  Writing documentation is also
important, as is being one of the brave souls who first trys to use the
program in a real-world situation.  There's something for all of us here.

And if you _are_ a coder and aren't excited about the core procedure stuff I
talked about above, there's still a need for the UI stuff.

--
Doug Loss            An idealist is one who, on noticing that
dloss@csrlink.net    roses smell better than cabbage, concludes
(717) 326-3987       that they will also make better soup.
                        H. L. Mencken