Developer Soup (Software Carpentry, Python, Eiffel, KDevelop)

[Greg Wilson]

> It seems to me that Components are more to the point than "contracts", and
> that contracts are a useful part of the whole picture of components.

I would recommend Clemens Szyperski's "Component Software" very strongly.
I write book review columns for "Doctor Dobb's Journal" on a fairly regular
basis; his
was the only book to which I've ever devoted an entire column.  It is not only
an
insightful comparison and critique of existing component systems (COM, CORBA,
and JavaBeans), it also looks in detail at what components are trying to
accomplish,
and what the real obstacles are.  Five stars.

> While I agree with Mr. Wilson's "Software Carpentry" ideal,

Please call me 'Greg' :-)

> it seems to me that the $850K being spent on
> resuscitating these crusty old Unix command line tools (chiefly make,
> autoconf, and automake) to make new command line tools is a perfect example
> of the things he criticizes in programmers like me.
> I think it would be far better to invest in building tools to plug into an
> already started new development environment.

Absolutely --- good designs will have to address inter-operability with other
tools.
One of the criticisms made of 'make', for example, is that its dependency
checking
and rule evaluation engines aren't accessible to other programs (except in the
"everything is Turing equivalent if you write a big enough Awk script" sense).

Once the first-round winners are published, I hope that you will take the time
to look
them over, and post your ideas about how or whether they could be used in
KDevelop
and other IDEs.

Thanks,
Greg Wilson
Software Carpentry Project Coordinator