Archive for August, 2005

software quality in open source

Monday, August 29th, 2005

on the drunk and retired podcast, there recently was a discussion about software quality. it was mentioned that open source software might be of higher code quality because of it being mostly developed in a distributed way, i.e. the chartacteristics of open source development - being developed by people that are spatially distributed - enforces a higher quality.

when developers share an office, it is much easier to solve problems. if a piece of code is not working as expected, you just go over and ask the person that wrote the code. the answer you might then get could be something like “i know, it doesn’t work that way. but you can do this and this to work around the problem and then it’s going to work”. so, instead of fixing the code, a team might tend to work around problems.

in open source, it is usually much harder to get a grip on the person that has written a specific piece of code. you usually don’t know him or her and the only way to contact someone is using email, which is typically slow and won’t solve your problem in the next couple of minutes.

a way around this communication problem is to simply write code that does not have this problem and can be used in all kinds of ways - better code.

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new approaches to interface design

Wednesday, August 17th, 2005

archy is a new approach to a human-computer interface. instead of putting files into folders and have separate applications, in archy, everything is just contained in one single space, and you navigate by zooming in an out. check out the zoom demo (cursor up/down for zooming in (to the mouse pointer position) and out, mouse drag for panning).

imagine a system where your work can never be lost. Imagine a system where you can do what you want to do — send email, write a book, make calculations, manipulate pictures — at all times, without having to switch applications. Imagine a system where you never have to search for a file buried in a maze of folders. (from http://rchi.raskincenter.org/aboutrchi/index.php)

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