I was going to release a demo of OsisForms today but...
Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 12:22 pm
...I've all all but abandoned the project instead. Are you thinking ->
?
There are several reasons for this:
It is bitterly disappointing to work for so many mouths, I'm embarrassed to admit it may be six, and have nothing material to show for it. Every time I need a form, I'll have to mark it up manually, do all the boring validation when I know these are problems that can be greatly simplified.
It's not all bad though. One side-effect of the project it that it has forced me to up my programming abilities. I think I'm a pretty good programmer now. One that understands all the principles and will continue to hone them for years and years before I can call myself truly 'pro'.
It's not that the project is impossible or even that it was a bad idea. It is just that I need lots of people behind it, helping me make the decisions, the code itself is dead easy it's the decisions that are incredibly difficult, and to be paid! So if 3 good programmers turn to me and say "Yeah, I wanna do this!" then the project is back on, otherwise I'm dropping it.
It's funny, I think back to when I was looking for other libraries, that do what I was planning on doing in OsisForms, I couldn't find any. Even the mighty Zend promised Zend_Form and haven't delivered a thing yet. Incidentally the proposal for Zend_Form has a lot in common with OsisForms as it stands just by matter of us both arriving at the same conclusions. I did consider that there might be a reason for why nobody had done what I wanted to do, but clearly I wasn't wise enough at the time to find it.
I do feel some sense of pride: I've spent six months of my life devoted to something I believed in, undergoing pressure from my parents, continuous set backs and difficulty realisations. And yet despite all that, I carried on! I'm either a complete idiot or one determined mother <span style='color:blue' title='I'm naughty, are you naughty?'>smurf</span>, or both.
If anybody does want to see the code, its on SourceForge (and has been for a week or so). Do with it, as you wish. If the project was to start up again I certainly wouldn't be scrapping that code, its all good stuff - minus some bugs and need for refactoring in select places. Perhaps after all this time I managed to write code that potentially fulfilled 30% of my requirements.
To finish, I would like thank all you guys for being around to help me out with all my coding problems. There is no way I would have got as far as I have without you. So thanks. I'm sorry if this disappoints anybody but as I've said this isn't a project one man could ever complete before the whole IT industry moves on.
Yipppeee! I'm free now!!!!
Peace
There are several reasons for this:
- I have come to realise that what I am trying to do is, very, very, difficult. Where ever I've turned there have been endless design decisions to make. HTML is good because it provides very basic building blocks that can be combined into larger ones to complete tasks. It took me 3 rewrites before I realised I needed to do the same if I was ever going to compete. The end result is a complex API - You know like the size of MFC for Windows or any widget library. All those things are massive!
- It would be much much better to write something that interprets XForms into HTML/CSS/JS. J2EE has one and its looks amazing. The XForms schema has been carefully worked out (years of thinking) to provide the best flexibility at the highest level of abstraction. I really should have based my project on it from the start instead of trying to do the same on my own.
- All the time I've spent doing this has be solitary work earning me no money, I am now completely broke. I've turned down countless nights out with friends, worked through all the weekends, worked late, worked over Christmas. In addition my health is getting bad because I'm taking virtually no exercise and I'm sitting over a computer all the time....The constant push to get this done has basically seen me sign my life away to the project and I want it back!!!1
The latest version of this project I was working on was the fourth rewrite. The previous 3 were all heavily motivated by ease of use. This last one has been different because I had learnt a massive amount about writing good object oriented code (the application of patterns etc.) and the importance of flexibilty. It is only now, after 3 failed attempt and one aborted one, that I've actually got the experience and skills to do "Eh up! This is silly."* Speed up the process of making forms
* Provide an powerful modularised API that gives developers a great deal of flexibility and control
* Create a comprehensive toolset capable of tackling complex input tasks
* Use JavaScript to enhance only
* Encourage code written to make use of OsisForms to be organised and reusable
* Observe web standards, accessibility, usability, security, internationalization and portability issues.
* Acknowledge the importance of good documentation
It is bitterly disappointing to work for so many mouths, I'm embarrassed to admit it may be six, and have nothing material to show for it. Every time I need a form, I'll have to mark it up manually, do all the boring validation when I know these are problems that can be greatly simplified.
It's not all bad though. One side-effect of the project it that it has forced me to up my programming abilities. I think I'm a pretty good programmer now. One that understands all the principles and will continue to hone them for years and years before I can call myself truly 'pro'.
It's not that the project is impossible or even that it was a bad idea. It is just that I need lots of people behind it, helping me make the decisions, the code itself is dead easy it's the decisions that are incredibly difficult, and to be paid! So if 3 good programmers turn to me and say "Yeah, I wanna do this!" then the project is back on, otherwise I'm dropping it.
It's funny, I think back to when I was looking for other libraries, that do what I was planning on doing in OsisForms, I couldn't find any. Even the mighty Zend promised Zend_Form and haven't delivered a thing yet. Incidentally the proposal for Zend_Form has a lot in common with OsisForms as it stands just by matter of us both arriving at the same conclusions. I did consider that there might be a reason for why nobody had done what I wanted to do, but clearly I wasn't wise enough at the time to find it.
I do feel some sense of pride: I've spent six months of my life devoted to something I believed in, undergoing pressure from my parents, continuous set backs and difficulty realisations. And yet despite all that, I carried on! I'm either a complete idiot or one determined mother <span style='color:blue' title='I'm naughty, are you naughty?'>smurf</span>, or both.
If anybody does want to see the code, its on SourceForge (and has been for a week or so). Do with it, as you wish. If the project was to start up again I certainly wouldn't be scrapping that code, its all good stuff - minus some bugs and need for refactoring in select places. Perhaps after all this time I managed to write code that potentially fulfilled 30% of my requirements.
To finish, I would like thank all you guys for being around to help me out with all my coding problems. There is no way I would have got as far as I have without you. So thanks. I'm sorry if this disappoints anybody but as I've said this isn't a project one man could ever complete before the whole IT industry moves on.
Yipppeee! I'm free now!!!!
Peace