Wednesday, January 05, 2005
2004 Recap
The first half of my summer bursary was mostly spent learning new software. I learnt how to develop applications on the Mac with XCode, and on Linux with KDevelop. I learnt how to use CVS, a really cool thing that helps you always have a functioning version of your programme. I'm also becoming more and more familiar with QT, the multi-platform interface builder.
The hardest thing I had to do was understand someone else's code. I knew commenting was important before this project, but I really appreciate how important it is now! Becoming familiar with someone else's style and the way they think takes a while, and it's tough. Understanding what's going on in their programme is also difficult, and it took quite a while for me to get to grips with things. I now have a pretty good idea of what part does what, even if I don't understand how things work in places (ie, getting data to and from the sound card).
For the last part of the five weeks, I was restructuring the GUI elements of the programme, trying to make it easier to add in new widgets (after all, that's what I was here for). I used all my 346 skills in adding some more classes in, which now allows us to do things more easily than before (by means of abstraction). We shouldn't need to do any casting. Well, not much, anyway.
I implemented my first own widget in the last week, the "pitch compass". I think it's really cool. It didn't take too long either, which is hopefully a measure of how successful I was in restructuring.
I also began working on making the programme "smarter". Adding a new widget in is much easier than before - the programme generates some of its menus dynamically, which means when you're adding a widget in, you only need to change a couple of things.
The first five weeks of the bursary were mainly educational, but I got quite a bit done in the last two or so. Hopefully in the next five, I can implement some really cool widgets so my work is more visible rather than behind the scenes.
The hardest thing I had to do was understand someone else's code. I knew commenting was important before this project, but I really appreciate how important it is now! Becoming familiar with someone else's style and the way they think takes a while, and it's tough. Understanding what's going on in their programme is also difficult, and it took quite a while for me to get to grips with things. I now have a pretty good idea of what part does what, even if I don't understand how things work in places (ie, getting data to and from the sound card).
For the last part of the five weeks, I was restructuring the GUI elements of the programme, trying to make it easier to add in new widgets (after all, that's what I was here for). I used all my 346 skills in adding some more classes in, which now allows us to do things more easily than before (by means of abstraction). We shouldn't need to do any casting. Well, not much, anyway.
I implemented my first own widget in the last week, the "pitch compass". I think it's really cool. It didn't take too long either, which is hopefully a measure of how successful I was in restructuring.
I also began working on making the programme "smarter". Adding a new widget in is much easier than before - the programme generates some of its menus dynamically, which means when you're adding a widget in, you only need to change a couple of things.
The first five weeks of the bursary were mainly educational, but I got quite a bit done in the last two or so. Hopefully in the next five, I can implement some really cool widgets so my work is more visible rather than behind the scenes.
# posted by Stuart @ 9:44 AM 
