OK, that was alot. I'll try to respond to each point starting from the bottom up.
I agree. I think CDC is an incredible program, especially considering that it was done all by one person up to this point. Patrick has done an incredible job so far. I also see much potential in CDC to become even more powerful and flexible.
I also worry a great deal about great programs like CDC being developed by only one person. This program is relatively complex. If anything were to happen to Patrick, we would all be at a loss. I don't think any of us could pick this program up by ourself and continue work on it.
I agree with you that the priority for CDC should be documentation. With a good set of documentation, anyone that want to can spin off their own version. For that reason alone, I am willing to help out in documenting CDC. Unfortunately, I don't know much of anything about Pascal or Delphi.
That brings me to my next concern. Without knowing much about Pascal, I wonder how closely tied this project is to Borland Delphi. I've downloaded a trial of Delphi, but it is time limited. I went searching for a free Pascal development tool. All I could find was Lazarus. I could not figure out how to load up CDC and build it. But, like I said, I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to Pascal. I wonder if the next step, after documentation, would be to make CDC independant of Borland products.
The next step after that would be to try to fully OO-ize CDC. Having a nearly 100% OO CDC would aide greatly in any future code conversions.
Which I think brings me to my final point. I think a Java/C# version of CDC would be far more maintainable long-term project than a Pascal version. There are far more people capable of coding in Java/C#. And, a fully OO codebase would be easier to maintain as well.
So, with all that said, I'm here volunteering my time. Starting about mid-January, I will probably have quite a bit of free time on my hands. At least for a few months. Although I spend the majority of my time now coding in C, I am capable of coding in Java and C#. Unfortunately, I have no real experience coding for a windowing environment, so that may be quite a steep learning curve for me.
Well, that enough for now. Let me know what you think. Tell me if I'm crazy or not.
Dan
Mathieu Clert� wrote:
Hi Dan,
Well I indeed planned to port CDC in a java-like language (in fact, building the core in parallel for java and C#)...
BUT!
1) The code in 80% undocumented at this stage, and I am working on with Patrick *when we both have time* ;
I'll probably have a litlle more time from next month.
2) We really need to consider the *reasons* for porting it... (As the program runs now both on win32 and linux)
and also would it be *porting* (=translate from pascal to java/c#) OR re-designing... since a part of CDC has came from the non-OO original versions.)
3) I am at this stage the only person who wants to do it (= any java/C# guys want to join?) and Patrick is not keen in moving to another platform (as he masters Delphi already), so it needs to be a project which HAS to evolve IN PARALLEL WITH the pascal version of CDC ; it means that we need to establish *interfaces*, not only CVS...
Interfaces and mini-rules which would explain the changes made to the delphi version, and most of all which would require those changes to follow the interface so that they could be easily applyable to the java-like version.
The first step is to design and document the original pascal code with the help of Patrick and build a solid doco to start from before implementing anything.
The second step is *mlaybe* to re-think the software in OO terms.
The more CDC will be split into modules, the easier it will be to upgrade all versions (and actually to understand what's happenning).
I think it's a great software, but at this stage, it's home-made and Patrick would enjoy some help for other developers to clean everything and draw new roads for the future of CDC.
All comments and remarks are welcome ;)
Cheers Mathieu Clerte Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
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