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Date:	Thu, 2 Jan 2003 17:25:51 PST8
From:	"Lynn H. Maxson" <lmaxson@pacbell.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-general@scoug.com
To:	< "scoug-general@scoug.com" > scoug-general@scoug.com >
Subject:	SCOUG-General: Open Source

Content Type: text/plain

SCOUG has in-house expertise in essentially every important
aspect of software development, especially programming.
That leaves us only with an issue of skills transfer. That
means sounding out various communication means to
determine which hold the most promise for skills transfer.

For those who do not program, fear programming, or believe
their previous skills have somehow rusted or abated I would
suggest as a first step in skills transfer that we engage in
learning how to read, thus analyse, a program. In open source
the source exists as a given. To use it we must first
understand it.

We have any number of erstwhile candidates of reasonable
complexity beyond the crudity of "hello, world" from which to
choose. I would suggest that we start with the HPCalc that
Bob Blair presented. At least we should insure that we can
use the tools on the CD to process the source.

We are at least fortunate that we have two open source
C/C++ compilers, GNU and Watcom. Probably on the CD we
should offer both along with the necessary equivalent
processes, principally compiler options and make files, to
create executables with both compilers. This permits some
form of comparison to occur.

Once we have properly digested HPCalc, finding now a new
comfort zone in reading other source code of interest, then
we should focus on understanding through reading how the
compilers work. That then will lead to our changing them to
make them work differently.

This allows us to make extensions, changes in this instance to
C (ignoring C++ for the moment and possibly forever), freeing
it from some compiler-based restrictions. Among them the
ability to include all 5 of the source files (external
procedures) of HPCalc as input to a compile. This eliminates
the need for creation of make files or linking.

Once then (or sometime during this interval) we should go
through the same process of examining open source editors,
providing a GUI (PM-based) interface similar to that of EPM, E,
or LPEX. At this point we now have the basic tools, the editor
and compiler, which we can now consider merging into a
single one with a single interface, shifting its code generation
to one of interpretive mode. This allows us then to have a
single tool capable of generating either interpretive or
compiled output as an option.

At that point (and again sometime during) we can more
closely examine some of the other functions to include like
producing the graphical output now only available in CASE
tools from the same source. Once you come to understand
that all outputs now produced separately from individual
sources can through software occur from the same source,
then you have just eliminated most of the people writing that
occurs within the software development cycle.

Maybe, just maybe, you too will have the "ach" phenomenon
that all these things exist today and simply need to be
cojoined within a single product, a single tool set with a single
user interface, to provide the most complete (and accurate)
means of peer review through software. Thus with the least
amount of writing (and rewriting, thinking, etc.) you will get
the most out in the fastest manner. That, my friends, is
productivity.

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