Monday, July 30, 2007

Late as always

Well,
As usual I am very late with everything. But this time, things are a bit more dangerous. I haven't finished the article about archimedes to submit to the Eclipse Technology eXchange (ETX). Worse than that, I am quite stuck with it. Can't write more than 1 paragraph per day currently. A big problem.

Also, I stopped working on last thursday so I should be a bit more active and present from now on. Got a lot of things to do but still I will make an effort to keep this up to date.

I have very few news at the moment about anything. Just a couple things that might interest people from around here:
I've been going to a Coding Dojo that just started in São Paulo (http://groups.google.com/group/dojo_sp). It is a very nice practice that aims to make programmer train their talent just like musicians and sportists do. Our meetings have been very nice and it is helping most of us to learn python and also to be more disciplined. We just changed our schedule to have meetings weekly on wednesday at 20:00 local time.

Also, I just became a student sponsored by the Qualipso project. I will be doing my masters on the lines of the project and, therefore, hope to finish my studies providing a nice set of practices based on agile methods to develop open source software. And, if possible, I hope I will participate in some nice open source development on the next couple years.

Last, but not least, I just joined as a junior member a very nice group called Agilcoop. The groups main purpose is to spread agile methods into the industry to improve the quality of software produced. Got a few nice tasks to do such as learning some Java FX (that's why I've been having codeaches with the eclipse plugin) and learning to write some classes. It promisses to give me work and fun.

Well, I guess this is all I can get you guys now. I hope to write more often from now on but let's see right?

Hugo

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Selection service, archimedes and docs

Once again I am too late to keep my old pace. Anyway, the end of the semester is always very time consuming.

Anyway, I would like to comment on a few things about RCP today.
I learned a few stuff about it lately. First thing is that there is a very nice tutorial about it at http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-WorkbenchSelections/article.html. The other thing is that this selection service can be quite useful if you start working with it from scratch.

Archimedes didn't, until now, had anything to do with that service and refactoring it to use the service will be another big work. With this, there are now 5 tasks that have top importance:
  1. Remodel the intersection finder system
  2. Re implement persistence support with XML/Arc, images, pdf and svg.
  3. Refactor Archimedes to make it profit from RCP's selection service.
  4. Adapt Archimedes and its plugins to be built with maven.
  5. Improve Developer support and User support.
I listed those without a priority order but I am sure those are top level.

I should be getting more time to write here and to code during the next semester since I am quitting my job to dedicate to my masters.

The development speed, however, will probably not improve a lot since I am now almost on my own to code. I might get some help from one or two volunteers but it won't be enough to keep the pace from last semester.

Apart from that, regarding documentation. I finished translating an article I wrote with Mariana last semester for the FISL. She needs to read it and correct all my numerous mistakes but the big boring part (translating) is done.
In the same subject, we are preparing another article in English to present Archimedes at the Eclipse Technology eXchange that will be held at the OOPSLA 2007 in October at Montreal. Once we finished it, I will release it somewhere on the net and post the link. If I can, I will try to do it one week before the submission date so that I can hear critics.

Basically that is it. I wish I would write here more often since I probably don't post all I could and would like to. But, hey, it's life right? So seen you soon (hopefully).