D&C GLug - Home Page

[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]

[LUG] Development (this might be long!)

 

In response to:

What languages? What kind of projects?
Have you now got a steady income?
(Do you fancy helping me with free software?)
:-)
(URL's in my sig)

Yep, i'd love to, but read on...

As quickly as i can, here's my bio (for want of a better word)

Started life with computers on stuff like ZX81, Dragon32, CPC464 (didn't we 
all do something like that!!). Real world wise, have never been to college or 
uni or anything, am completely self taught. Blagged a job as a Snobol 
programmer in 89 (i think) but that was short lived since the company was 
months away from implementing a new service which needed a lot of VB so there 
was me for 6 or 7 years i guess. QB, VBDos 1, VB4/5/6/.NET (although never 
have really got into the actual .NETism's). 

Jumped on the java bandwagon when 1.0 was coming along (98?) and kept up with 
stuff like RMI and Corba for as long as i could (here i did pay my own way 
for a few seminars and stuff as i was living in London at the time) but the 
company was not interested and i couldn't keep up the very rapid pace.

Then came C/C++. Got transferred and very much dropped in the deep end. Loved 
it, stuck with it, am still doing it. Just recently i was working on a 
government project and they stipulated it had to be java. So here i am back 
with java. The project also runs on RS's, hence i find myself back with linux 
as my main platform and java the current weapon.

So, what do i do? Mainly image conversion. Taking raw input data streams, 
deblocking stuff, making sense of it and then more times than not converting 
some format or other to PDF. Normally i have to confess using external 
libraries.

Now then, therein lies the problem. I'd love to get on board and contribute 
some work to linux. Always have wanted to. A few years back i was at a linux 
show and saw a very good book on linux coding and bought it. Trouble is, i 
didn't have the patience to sit there and wade through all the chapters on 
shell programming and regular expressions before i got to what i thought i 
wanted to know.

As any programmer will know, just because you can program, doesn't mean you 
can (if you know what i mean). I don't know anything about how KDE works for 
instance. Likewise enlightenment (writing this from e17 just for giggles 
right now). Sadly i also have very little experience of coding GUI's. In fact 
so little we may as well say none since it was all VB. All my work has been 
(and still is) command line based.

The problem comes from the fact that i find all the developers on big existing 
projects know exactly where they're going and what they're doing and if 
someone new comes along they're expected to miraculously know (or be able to 
learn just through looking at source code) how all the APIs work. And that's 
unlikely to happen any time soon, so it kindof stifles my will to contribute.

Maybe somewhere like DCLUG is the way to go since in theory there may be 
someone doing some projects locally with the time to explain how the APIs 
work and the code interacts and where they want to go with it etc, etc...

Hopefully i didn't make that sound too harsh, but i know what i mean :) As an 
example, I have contributed i think two new games to mame drivers (althugh i 
ended up not being credited - long story), but i still to this day have 
absolutely no grasp whatsoever on how mame (or indeed xmame) works!! I've no 
idea how ANY newcomer would get to learn how that thing hangs together!!

Oh, as for the subject of steady income, yes i'm one of the lucky ones. I was 
born in Minehead and moved away at 18 to find work. Consequently i've only 
been back down this way for a few years when work opportunities allowed and 
therefore still work for a company up in Wokingham (i work from home). I 
always wanted to be able to move back home one day (or somewhere near to it) 
and thankfully i was able to (hence Honiton, it's a very quick dash up the 
A303 to the office!).

Hmmm, time is also an issue. My main love (aside from the wife of course 
<cough!>) is arcade machines. Space Invaders, Asteroids etc. So most of my 
non-working time is spent in the workroom (aka garage!) soldering iron in 
hand working on repairing all those old games.

Anyway, if something presents itself that i can help with then i'll happily 
get involved.

(and sorry for going on so long - that was an introduction and a half!!)

Martin.

--
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the
message body to unsubscribe. FAQ: www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html