I’ve never really considered myself a programmer, nor did I ever want to be one. As it turns out though, I am slowly becoming one. Not necessarily a good one, but slowly I am getting there. We’re redesigning and completely restructuring our code and the way we make web-based maps at my job. The entire process is being done mainly by my friend Ian, and he is essentially mentoring me through the whole process. Currently, our code is mashed up and thrown about in random different places – it’s sloppy, but it works (for us). It’s not difficult for us to modify it because we’ve been working with it for so long and know all the quirks. We’ll be pumping out 45+ new maps though, and copying all the code / setting up the maps is not exactly a small task, taking an hour or two to set up a new map. Sounds fast, but that’s around 90 hours of work, if everything goes right (it never does). So, we’re spending the next few weeks rewriting everything so we can make maps a lot faster.
I’m familiar with the whole model – view – controller concept, and I like it. Breaking apart code and separating functionality is a great idea, and I try to follow that basic idea when I write new code. Since the maps we’ll be creating are similar, there will only be a few changes to the base code for each map. Putting MVC to practice, we’re breaking up the base, static code and the map-specific code. Going through this process helped me grasp why spending extra time to break code apart is well worth it. Instead of copying and pasting files around, changing little parts of them, and figuring out why something blows up two weeks later (and spending another two weeks to fix it because I forgot how this specific map was set up), we use a base folder which each map includes code from and has a much small local code base. It’s cleaner overall. Oh, and thoroughly commentened.
Andriod (from Google – if you haven’t heard of it…well, Google it) is exciting me than I thought possible. I used to think OpenMoko was the next big thing in cell phones, but after watching a demonstration of Andriod last night, OpenMoko seems like an anthill – Andriod being a badass Egyptian Pryamid (the newer looking ones in vegas of course). I downlaoded the SDK and I plan to start developing some applications and getting involved in big, professional software development communities. I was browsing some potential applications, and nothing really impressed me. Most people are creating social-networking or emergency services tools (which are great), but I think Andriod’s real potential has yet to be realized.
Well written article.