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Date:	Sun, 19 Jan 2003 13:20:30 PST8
From:	"Dave Watson" <david.watson@earthlink.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Programming: Shall we begin?

Content Type: text/plain

On 18 Jan 2003 at 19:50, Lynn H. Maxson wrote:
> I, for one, enjoyed Greg Smith's presentation today.

Great job, Greg -- thanks!

> ... there ought to be a way you can
> contribute money to pay to have source contributed.

I don't expect much of that. There will always be folks on the dole. I'm
not sure having open source freeloaders contribute money would
improve the software any more than making welfare bums take a
useless job would improve society. Finding _useful_ work for the
bums might improve the individuals in both cases. Software
development involves non-programming skills as well as coders, and
maybe we could get non-coders (or poor coders, like me) something
useful to do. Which is why I hope we can continue to perform
presentations like the last two at the general meeting, and not
segregate ourselves into a back room of coders.

> ... Even if you don't feel like programming, you neither want to
> write or rewrite a line of code, you should at least have a
> reading knowledge. You should be able to read and
> understand (mentally visualize) what the code does.

It's kind of like cooking. You can survive at the Golden Truffle or the
golden arches, but it's useful to have at least rudimentary skills in the
kitchen. Sometimes you don't need a 5-course dinner, or McDonalds
is closed, or won't do it your way. It's useful to know how to read a
cookbook or fix a sandwich and to have some of the fixins.

I think the important question now is "_what_ do we begin?" I'm not
confident we'll ever get more than a few members of this group to do
anything more useful than assemble for donuts. But we should try to
produce a small project to see if there's enough potential to pursue
this. Any suggestions?

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