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[Dms-commit] Changes to gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt
From: |
Julien Gilli |
Subject: |
[Dms-commit] Changes to gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt |
Date: |
Sat, 27 Aug 2005 16:17:27 -0400 |
Index: gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt
diff -u gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt:1.1
gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt:1.2
--- gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt:1.1 Sat Aug 27 16:52:02 2005
+++ gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt Sat Aug 27 20:17:27 2005
@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+Summer is over. For many of us it means shorter days, shedding tears saying
goodbye to our summer love and getting ahead lot of troubles^W fun at work.
Obviously, you need some lovin to get over it. GNOME Journal is right on time
again. We have a present for you. Hurry up and read on to open a pack full of
GNOME goodies, jewels and magic !
+
+Unless you've been hiding in a deep cave during the last two months, you've
heard about the Google Summer of Code. This article is a collection of
interviews of all the students that have been hacking on GNOME bounties during
the Google SoC. Not only will you discover eleven great concrete and working
projects, packed full of genius, nice tricks and eye candy. You will see how
these students, together with their mentors, the GNOME project as a whole and
Google got it right once again and pushed the GNOME desktop where it hasn't
been before !
+
+First, be sure to gather as much friends as you can around your screen, and
that no one miss the fun. Is everyone ready ? Ok, let's start the show !
+
+The first present is a cute little locked box. We all know that size doesn't
matter (does it ?). Let's get some help from his creator to unlock the magic.
+
+Encrypted folders and partitions have existed for quite a while now. How about
packing this into the usual GNOME eye candy and usability excellence so that
it's just one click away from anywhere on the desktop ? Let's discuss with our
encrypted-folder wizard about that.
+
+FIXME : Questions/Answers to/from John Manning.
+
+Wait, do you ear that sound ? Yes, we all noticed the nice melody playing out
from that box over there. Let's move on to see what's inside !
+
+
+FIXME : Questions/Answers to/from Raphael Slinckx
+
+Clever are the foxes, so clever must be the ideas packed in this
firefox-looking package. Let's prepare for the best while we hear the paper
scritch and scratch by opening this one !
+
+John Manning is the lucky guy that got working on this great Firefox
extension. SearchParty allows you to find some help from people all over the
world when you can't find the right keywords in order to perform a google
search. It's as simple as typing your query in the google search field to find
that you need some help, click a button to automatically join the right chat
room, and automatically get the keywords used by successfull queries on the
same topic.
+
+GJ: Does the project still match the initial plan ? If not, how far is it from
the initial plan and why ?
+
+JM: Yes and no. One technical detail changed, and made quite a ripple
throughout the rest of the project. I initially intended to write the Search
Party Protocol directly over TCP, and have a Java server somewhere that took
care of matching up users with the proper chat room, etc. My mentor, Seth
Nickell, pointed out early on that this might make the extension unusable for
those behind various firewalls, so he suggested XML-RPC. This changed several
things. First of all, I had to learn XML-RPC (it's not hard at all). Second,
I had to write a very different sort of server. It is esentially a PHP page
that responds to XML-RPC requests and stores all its data in a MySQL database.
Third, I had to teach the extension to speak XML-RPC, and Firefox's included
implementation is broken, so I had to find a third party Javascript library
(http:// solait.net/). So I ended up spending a lot more time on the extension
than I had initially intended. As a result, I think the extension is pretty
cool, but I haven't had that much time to focus on the trickiest part of the
project: deciding what exactly makes two search queries similar. I have a
decent algorithm, but it will be receiving a lot of love very soon.
+
+
+GJ: Did you enjoy your summer ?
+
+JM: Yes, very much. I graduated at the beginning and moved to California, and
now after much searching have a new software development job. It means I had
to work pretty hard to fit in as much time for Search Party as I wanted. But I
am very happy with the results of my efforts so far.
+
+GJ: Do you have somme funny anecdotes to tell our readers ?
+
+JM: Nothing in particular. My wife thinks the funniest thing is how she would
come in to see how I was doing, and I'd explain some horrible untraceable bug
that was driving me nuts (stupid interpreted languages!). A few hours later
(or the next day, after some rest), she'd hear me go
"OOoooooooooooooohhhhhh!!!", which meant that I'd figured out the simple source
of the problem. By the end of the summer, she'd go "Oooooooooooooooohhh!!!"
right along with me. She loves to make fun of me!
+
+GJ: Can you tell us about your mentor ?
+
+JM: Seth helped me out at some very key points in development. First of all,
it was his idea. ;-) Second, he pointed me at XML-RPC as I mentioned earlier.
As the extension took form, I was unhappy with the user interface (there was a
separate toolbar that gained a button for every search you made). Seth
suggested a cleaner solution based on his original mockups. Now he gives me
general UI tips whenever we meet up in IRC. I hope Seth continues his
involvement with Search Party development, since he is a very insightful
designer. Besides, if Seth is using Search Party, all the other kids will want
to be cool and use it, too!
+
+GJ: If you had to choose the three most important things you learned by
working on this project, what would they be, and why ?
+
+
+JM : 1. Get your code in CVS as early as possible. The shame of it all will
drive development and increase productivity quite a bit.
+2. KISS (keep it simple stupid). Don't over-engineer, but don't desgin
yourself into a corner, either. Reuse code (your own and others') where you
can. 3. Keep lists. I eventually moved mine over to
http://live.gnome.org/SearchParty , but before I had my stuff in CVS, Tomboy
was my constant companion!
+
+GJ: By hacking on this project, what are the things (technical or not) you
found truly amazing with GNOME ? What do you think need substantial work to be
as amazing as the rest of the desktop ?
+
+JM: The most amazing thing was learning about everyone else's projects!
Behdad's preload stuff for Fedora has so much potential. Raphael's gshrooms
project is of course super cool and will soon take over the world. Adam's
CamTrack is so nifty I can't wait to see how people make use of it. GNOME is
already great, and these people just ensure that it will keep blowing us all
away.
+
+GJ: Last but not least, is the project done ? If not, will you keep hacking on
this project in the future ?
+
+JM: No, it is not done. I intend to continue working on it for quite awhile.
If this project is successful, I suspect the server will go through a lot of
performance tuning and other refactoring. Not to mention all the work I would
like to do on the query matching algorithms. However, the extension is really
becoming quite useable, and I would love for people to download it from the
wiki, try it out, and tell me what they think! I hope to make a release to the
general Gnome/Mozilla communities in the near future.
+
+
- [Dms-commit] Changes to gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt, Julien Gilli, 2005/08/27
- [Dms-commit] Changes to gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt,
Julien Gilli <=
- [Dms-commit] Changes to gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt, Julien Gilli, 2005/08/28
- [Dms-commit] Changes to gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt, Julien Gilli, 2005/08/28
- [Dms-commit] Changes to gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt, Julien Gilli, 2005/08/28
- [Dms-commit] Changes to gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt, Julien Gilli, 2005/08/28
- [Dms-commit] Changes to gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt, Julien Gilli, 2005/08/28
- [Dms-commit] Changes to gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt, Julien Gilli, 2005/08/29
- [Dms-commit] Changes to gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt, Julien Gilli, 2005/08/30
- [Dms-commit] Changes to gnomejournal/SoC/SoCInterviews.txt, Julien Gilli, 2005/08/31