Project dream

[Will Stuyvesant]

> [Andrew Dalke"]
> An integrated chemical/bioinformatics development and
> exploration environment.  Got a few million dollars to fund me?
> (Actually, more like 10 million, but bootstrappable with only
> a few million.)
> 
>    :)

I guess all that money is needed for getting high quality people into
it?  Or other reasons?  What techniques would you use?

>  
> > - A civilization like game in Python, with multiplayer support via
> > twisted.
> 
> There's been a few civ clones -- I recall playing one in the
> mid-90s for Python using CLIPS for the AI.  Don't recall the
> name now.  There's also openciv (in Python, nearly complete,
> no longer active) or freeciv (in C, active).  What would the
> advantage be to writing yet another clone?

Getting one to 1.0, to *finish* one, to a stable version that is at
least as good as the original civ outofthebox.  I don't think the C
based versions will finish, C is rather too low level to my taste. 
Maybe Python can do it.  I *know* it can, but for it to happen is
another thing.

> > - An easy to use tool for drawing diagrams, typically various kinds of
> > arrows and circles and boxes, that produces nice .eps and .svg files.
> 
> What about Sketch?
>   http://sketch.sourceforge.net/

I was not aware of Sketch, thanks for the link.  But it has to wait
until I have broadband again: needs GTK, GTK+, libart, etc.  I am on
Windows and downloads are slow now.

> > - A roguelike in Python.  Since there is still no portable curses, it
> > needs WConio or something like that, and also multiplayer would be
> > great.
> 
> Why does that need to be rewritten in Python?  As I understand
> it, the C version is very portable and may simply need just bindings
> for Python.

It is, but I would like to program it.  Design an AI, called Borg in
roguelikes.  And I can not do C bindings (too long ago I did C). 
Besides I don't *want* to C again :-)

> > - Something for weblogging and todo things, probably via CGI.
> 
> Aren't there a few dozen of those already?  Falls into the category
> of easy to write but without one clear way to do it.  So there are
> a lot of different implementations, all different, all focused on solving
> the given author's needs.

Python can be used here to *find* the way to do it, because it is easy
to start all over from scratch.  But so far I have not found a good
path.

> > What would your favorite be?
> 
> More important, what would *your* favorite be.  It looks like
> you want to do a project but don't know which one to focus on.
> My answer then is to do any of these projects; they are all great
> ones to learn how to do larger, more useful projects.

Um, more useful?  Can you give some more examples of what you think
useful?
I am looking for a fun project and inspiration and maybe even fun
people who join a project, you got that right :-)