Day: September 20, 2006

Homeschool day 18 of 180

I love to write vision, robotics, and statistical process control programs in C++. I honestly believe that one of the great successes of Microsoft was that they have always provided a way for programmers to solve difficult technical problems while hiding much of the tedium of the build process behind their IDE. mind you, there is still a lot of ugliness their, but it is possible to write programs in my subspecialty without knowing a lot about the ins and outs of the different compiler and linker switches and so forth. The reality is that the more you know about such things, the better and faster you can program, but it is not absolutely necessary.

In my latest project, I want to program a Linux computer to perform a process measurement and control task using a mechanical system to deliver the parts and a camera to inspect the parts. i had two false starts with the Anjuta and Eclipse IDE’s that lead to extreme frustration. I have always been a fan of Gnome and GTK+, but I want to have as little as possible to do with automake, configure, anf all those other tools required to do Linux programming. I want to be able to do my work and gradually work into the knowledge of all those tools, not vice-versa. I have found that KDevelop is the tool that best allows me to do that. I finally went back to KDevelop last night and had a program up and running within twenty minutes of the time I got the program installed. Impressive. I have not used KDevelop for a couple of years now, but I am very, very impressed with its capability. It was good before, but it is way more robust with more features and integration with additional tools than when I last used it.

I cannot help but think that ease of program development is a huge advantage in the adoption and proliferation of Linux.

Yesterday I went to piano lessons and my teacher, Mrs. Hickenlooper, helped me with the hymns that I am trying to learn. She also gave me a new piece instead of my Bach piece. The Bach piece was too difficult but this new one looks like fun. Mrs. Waldo put up a comment yesterday asking Christian and I if we would be able to go over and play some music for her Mother at the home where she lives. (is that right?) I was thinking about it just this morning and I cannot wait to go over there and play. I will practice my songs this morning so that I can play them well when I go over.

I am reading an awesome book called The Dark Frigate. it is a Newberry Award winning book and although the old English and the Scottish accent is hard to translate it is a wonderful novel.