I've been coding alot of web-stuff all my life, rails lately. And i can always find a website to code, but i'm kind of bored with it. Been taking alot of courses of Java and C lately so i've become a bit interested in desktop application programming.
Problem: I can't for the life of me think of a thing to code for desktop. I just can't think of anything i can code that isn't already out there for download. So what do i do?
I need some project suggestions that i can set as a goal.
I would say you should roam through github or some other open source site and find an existing young or old project that you can contribute to. Maybe there is something that is barely off the ground, or maybe there is a mature project that could use some improvement.
I find to complete a project, it needs to be something I am passionate about. I feel you need to find your own project I'm afraid.
There is always the Netflix Prize though!
I would write a ray tracer.
Oops, sorry... you're looking for an original idea. :) Ray tracers are still cool, though, and easy to get started on. Maybe you'll get an idea for a game while you're working on it.
Visit shoooes.net for a UI toolkit that's easy and fun, and then the-shoebox.org to see the kinds of things people are doing with it.
If you could make a Ruby ANSI (and xbin, and idf, and adf...) Editor, I would love you. Because that means you would have written ANSI parsing routines that I can hope you release to the open source community.
... but that is a selfish answer. Oh, and a cross-platform editor would be nice as well (although TundraDraw somewhat takes care of that).
Related
I am very much a Ruby newb - hoping to migrate to Ruby on Rails (although I have walked through Mike Hartl's Tutorial, which was excellent). I just want to solidify my Ruby knowledge first.
I am working on a hobby Ruby project to help me learn. I am pretty happy with how far I have got so far, but wanted to discuss/share it with other like-minded novice/beginner programmers.
Can anyone point me to a 'community' that promotes collaboration, critisim and discussion on code (ideally Ruby, obvs)?
If such a community doesn't exist, does anyone have any advice on how to find other like-minded programmers working on small-scale scripts/programs?
I have an account on Github, and on here (obviously!). Whilst Github is great for navigating around, cloning and looking at people's code, I don't feel anywhere near the level where I can start to actually contribute to anything and likewise request people look at my code. Maybe I am just being a wuss and I should just jump in the deep end? Perhaps I am not using GitHub correctly as a 'social network'.
Also, from what I can see, StackOverflow is not the place to send out 'Hey, check this out and let me know what you think' type requests either.
Not meant to be a discussion - just whether anyone knows if such 'networks' exist.
It depends on where you're located, but hacknights (Ruby or otherwise) are probably up your alley. There are different flavors (Are you solving a stated problem? Working on something general?) but usually you can work with others in a collaborative and low-stakes environment. I'd suggest searching for "hacknight" in your area and look at any past or upcoming nights.
As an example, see http://www.meetup.com/torontoruby/events/53887372/
RailsCasts - very interesting project for knowing ruby-technologies.
Also you can going to software-company and start working, and you get criticism, discussions and collaboration :)
I am trying to work with FranTK in order to make some examples to work for class. But cant go further the installation process (cabal install may be to mainstream).
I've gotten it from http://src.gnu-darwin.org/ports/x11-toolkits/hs-frantk/work/
in the readme a directory above it says i need to compile TclHaskellSrc, then FranSrc, then FranTkSrc. but i dont know how.
It also says it works with ghc-5, will it work with ghc-7?
has someone already use it successfully?
FRAN is outdated, bitrotted, and will almost certainly not compile under GHC 7. (See Conal Elliott's page for confirmation of this.) It was supposed to have been followed up with successors Reactive and FieldTrip, but, if I remember correctly, these projects hit a snag over OpenGL implementation issues.
If you're looking for good demos of FRP animation, then you'll be better off with one of the following:
elerea - it's simple, and has several good examples
sodium - also simple, and also has several good examples
reactive-banana - More complex than the other two, and more intended for GUI programming than for animation. Still worth a look, as it is well-documented and actively maintained.
The state of the art for FRP used to be Yampa, but I'd recommend against using either it or its recent fork Animas, not because they're bad in any way, but rather because they use Arrows, which tend to overcomplicate an already-difficult subject.
Hope this helps.
Old thread, I know, but Elm (elm-lang.org) has come along in the meantime. It compiles down the JavaScript, supports animations easily, and is under active development.
I think this is a project in future though not very near (I have other project I'm working on) but as I always do, I love to ask questions and get clear view of what is facing me and may be slowly learn some useful things. I am a fan of netbeans (Because so far is the only IDE that can meet my need) for PHP coding but it is very resource hunger. MAC people are blessed with Nice IDEs like Coda, TextMate et al. I though in future I would code an IDE and if thing goes wel I may well sell it :)
Now My question is, what one needs to know to code such an editor?
I know how to make GUI and events interaction in wxWidgets and I know there is wxSTC for making editors but I lack general knowledge of what is needed to make full fledged PHP editor (adding there by Javascript/Html support).
Google didn't help much, may be I'm using wrong keyewords
Thanks for direction and/or help
I went with wxSTC. The Wiki docs were helpful to start with, then scintilla docs and finally wxSTC Docs at yellowbrain are wonderful!
Right now I'm not sure...
I'd say yes. I'm using it. I know for a fact that Universal are using it on some of their (thousands of) sites. I will add some caveats, however:
There are serious problems with setting it up, especially if you want to debug into the libraries.
The helper functions favour prototype, as opposed to the more modern jQuery. This is changing rapidly, however.
The documentation is a bit chaotic, again the Castle Team are working on that.
I'm not guaranteeing every last "out-there" feature works, but the point of the system is actually to keep it simple.
Compared to vanilla ASP.NET, it's an absolute joy. I assure you that you won't miss viewstate.
We have been building a fairly large application with it for the past year and a half. Its been nice not to have to deal with the old ASP/Page based model and use the better Model/View/Controller design pattern.
To get the new stuff you really need to work off the trunk of development because they don't do releases very often. We have a lot of tests that get the framework involved so when an update in the framework breaks something we depend on we know about it immediately.
If you have to work in .NET this beats the heck out of the alternatives.
There is an overview on the monorail forum: http://forum.castleproject.org/viewforum.php?f=6
I'm using it for an application and haven't had any big issues with it.
The biggest problem is indeed find good documentation and examples.
I've had no problems setting it up. Julian, I don't think it is constructive to say things like "serious problems" without any further clarification or example.
Debugging into the libraries is trivial. Because it's open source, you can debug into the whole thing.
I've been using MonoRail for production for ages on many projects, as an employee, as an indie contractor, and for non-work related sites.
I know I'm biased on that, however I can whole heartedly promise that my positive usage experience is what lured me into contributing to the project, not the other way around.
What real-world projects would you suggest looking through the sources?
As I'm learning Java Swing, mucommander seems to be a decent example. The code is excessively commented though.
EDIT: No shameless plugs plz :).
I learned a lot from looking at the source code to GoGrinder. It's well thought out, uses MVC correctly, and the comments are helpful (and no, I didn't write it). It's also a fun program to use if you want to learn how to play Go.
For Gui design, Patterns and general good advice I highly reccomend Jeremey Miller's series of articles on building a better CAB. For C#, but equally applicable to Java. Also using
the MVC style which Stackoverflow follows, and Apple uses for Interface Builder.
Build your own CAB
Jeremy's articles/ideas are followed in his own project, which you can download and inspect at http://storyteller.tigris.org/
Take a look at the Windows version of truecrypt. It is one of the best organized open source projects I've ever seen. You can almost tell how the whole thing works just from the directory and file layout.
What I've done to learn some new technologies over the years is to look to open source projects that both match the criteria you're looking for and also interest you.
I'm not a Swing guy, but I'd suggest finding a project that uses Java Swing, does not appear too complicated, and then start digging through the source. The nice thing is you can then see the app before you start poking through it, and then you can see what happens as you change stuff.
The idea behind picking something that interests you is that it will keep you engaged. I am intrigued by content management systems, so I might download a CMS that I can then see how stuff works, and I'm engaged because the problem domain of the project fits in with an interest.
I've done this once or twice when I had to get up to speed on C# and I think it works will. YMMV....
Some of the most well thought out source code ( c++ ) I have seen in an open source project is the Ogre3D graphics engine, I've learned a lot about OOA&D just by looking at the structure and reading the comments. It is also well maintained and the community is very active.. http://ogre3d.org