Saturday, August 22, 2009

Update August 22.2009

Well, summer has been a mix of work, friends / family, and of course: code.
School's starting in a few weeks, so we all know what that means. Less time to work on awesome pet projects. =/

I haven't had as much time to work as I want, but I've definitely made progress. After coming back from three weeks of holidays, it came as a surprise to me when I started to code and document for 6-8 hours every day without any prodding. Being in a very small company... there's still a long way to go. However, I've got command line arguments processing fine, a configuration file and logging mechanism (with console gui for output if desired) working. An accomplishment for someone with so little real-world experience as I.
This is actually the easy stuff; once the base of my libraries are created, I'll start having to learn about graphical manipulation and key controls. Even when the libraries are completed, I have an IDE planned. It should take years to complete, but I think it will benefit the open-source community once finished.

The reason I haven't been letting much out about this project is because
1. I don't think many people care right now (0 comments on all posts, no e-mails, etc.)
2. I'll need to create a portion of this project before I feel it will have any resonance with the community. So I have something to show for my efforts, especially since it's a little ambitious what I'm planning.
3. School is going to greatly reduce the time I have to work on extra projects. For instance, last semester I had an average of 3-4 hours of homework a night, moreso near the end of the year. (Why can't teachers properly balance workloads throughout the year? Oh well, they can't be blamed for every missed deadline or delay.)
4. I like keeping all 0 readers in suspense.

On a more personal note, every day I like Microsoft less and less. Not for no reason either, I've been using their OS and software for over 18 years and only in the past 3-4 have I switched to Linux. (2+ years of NOT having M$ on my computers.)
It seems that they have stopped caring about quality of software, interoperability, performance (Vista anyone?), and most of all: flexability - customizability - integration.
Look at KDE, my desktop environment. I've customized it to suit my needs so I can spend hours coding, listening to music, browsing files on my computer without having to so much as move the mouse an inch. Why can't Microsoft have a KHotKeys application?

On another note, if you're looking for a nice iso / file / squashfs mounting app, I found a nice GUI kde-app you would find useful.
Since I have starcraft / warcraft / etc. games running on my linux pc, some need the cd in order to play. Having them mounted (easily) is a blessing, so newbies please check it out.

http://www.hyperray.net/hyperget/silicon-auto-image-mounter

Back to work, For the Horde, etc.