Suggestions stolen from Berlin

[Erik Walthinsen <omega@aracnet.com>]

>From Nathan J Hurst <njh@cs.monash.edu.au>:

"
I suggest, for the smooth running of this project, basic needs must be 
written down.  Top down designed sub projects(preferably independant, to 
speed development) with clear and useful goals setup.

at the same time, get programmers to work on things which are almost 
certainly going to be used(optimised alpha blitter, e.g.), get 
programmers to work out efficient ways to do things(regions, hit 
detection, are floats faster than fixed?, useful base classes/functions), 
implement cool widgets(just drawing various pixmaps, or building povray 
models), find out what is efficient on various architectures(remembering 
that no-one will learn a non-portable library in linux), recruiting new 
members etc.

Find Phd students who are thinking about what to research and see if they 
can help.

Read books on Software engineering.

If you don't learn from history, you are destined to repeat it.
"

The first paragraph we have a good start on, IMO.  For the second para,
there's some missing context there, you can mostly ignore the various
technical things mentioned.

But the third para is the interesting one.  It touches on something that we 
really should be doing, not only for our good but for the good of others:

We should try to get into various universities, and find both students 
(undergrad and post-grad) and professors who have knowledge in the various 
areas involved, and get them to work on the project.  Not only is this good 
for us (especially in the UI team), but it can provide various papers, 
theses, and doctorate material for people.

As far as reading books, go find books at your local library (public or univ) 
on both the field(s) you are working on and software management.  The more we 
know, the easier things will be.

And everyone pay close (VERY CLOSE) attention to the last sentence!


If we can work quickly, efficiently, and include a few really cool things, we 
have a very good chance to blow the s(t)ocks off of good ol' Billy.

TTYAL,
     Omega
     SEUL Project infrastructure/system architecture

        Erik Walthinsen - Webmaster and infrastructure for SEUL    __
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