The 5 stepping stones of creation

Posted by Ryan Gordon on January 20, 2009 under MyBB | Be the First to Comment

  1. Never be idiot-proof

    Never develop your application to “second-guess” or “compensate.” Doing so will only give the impression that the application is smarter then it actually is, and eventually intent-errors will plague you. Remember, computers are built on the foundation that it cannot guess correctly what you want. That is why everything is explicit. Don’t be Microsoft and end up having to fix it several years later.

  2. Expect the unexpected

    There is absolutely no doubt that you will run into issues you never dreamed you would encounter with your application. Your best bet is to prepare yourself for these issues as much as possible. I recommend two or three punching bags.

  3. Experience, Experience, Experience

    Experience drives good practices. Good practices lead to a good product. I cannot stress that enough. However, you must remain assert because experience cannot be born overnight. Only through time will you will gain experience. But experience does not end because time never stops ticking.

  4. Start small

    No one likes a “showoff”, nor could you ever be one without an onion- Layers upon layers of work, built upon previous layers, and layers before that- All the way down to the fine idea that sparked your creation. If you try to take on something big, first thing, you will fail. You will loose yourself upon the thousands and thousands of standards, features, ideologies, et cetera, that need to be accounted for in order to make a program good. So start small and don’t spread yourself too thin. Focus on the functionality first, worry about the design and other necessities later.

  5. Be Creative

    There are no limits to your imagination. Write down all of your ideas and consult your friends and others on ideas and feedback as well. The best thing to do is implement all the ideas you and others reasonably have first. If you plan on doing it later, don’t. Do it now. If you delay it for a future version, it will only be harder. If you will, once you bake a cake, you can’t easily go back and change the filling.

Happy New Years! A look back & a look ahead…

Posted by Ryan Gordon on January 1, 2009 under General, Life, MyBB, School | Read the First Comment

Has it been quite a year! I’ve extended the levees on the boundary of my knowledge and filled even further the never ceasing quicksand trap of friends and family. And with that in mind:

A look back on my own life:

  • I got my drivers permit
  • I worked for ActiveVideo Networks during the summer as an Intern under SQA/Development
  • MyBB 1.4 was released, receiving a huge upgrade to MyBB 1.2. We:
    • went through a few staff reorganizations
    • had a professional security audit
    • went Open Source, GNU/GPL
    • launched our official MyBulletinBoard blog
    • created a Software Quality Assurance group for MyBB
    • KDE launched MyBB as their official forum software
    • I’m now officially Lead Developer at MyBB

A birds-eye look back at 2008:

  • Main Street continued to drag down hill
  • Wall Street plummeted, catching up to main street
  • A historical presidential election took place in the United States of America
  • Palin’s daughter, Bristol Palin, 17, gave birth to a baby boy Dec. 28 (random… I know)

My want-to-be look forward for my own life in ‘09:

  • Applying to colleges into the computer science field
  • Learning other languages. My main goals are: Python, Java, C++, and Robotic-type language
  • Continue a technological oriented summer or more permament, part-time job
  • Get out and play soccer or job more often. Perhaps join the school team.
  • Install gentoo, debian, and fedora onto my test dev server to learn how to do it
  • MyBB 1.6
    • Is being mapped out in the planning stage and
    • already mapped-out features are being implemented
  • MyBB 2.0 is in the planning stages
    • It will be ****ing awesome (just thought I’d say that from the get-go)
    • It will be sexy, It will be slender, It will be extensible, It will be easy to use, It will be secure, It will be fast, It will be tested
    • It will be our chance to take everything we’ve learned and wrap it all up into one amazing product

My want-to-be birds-eye look ahead for ‘09:

  • See the way-past-due demise of Internet Explorer 6. At least, enough that we developers don’t have to support it any longer
  • See IE8 come out as a competent, standard-compliant browser that will truly bring an end to the countless painful hours of dodgy workarounds
  • See the release of 32 nanometer chips
  • See Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose go national with their own beer reviewing, liver trashing, funny as funny can be news TV show
  • Turn around the United State’s economical fiasco into a more stable environment
  • See the bullet train begin construction in California
  • See alternative and renewable energy sources take precedence over other means of producing energy
  • Dissolve and Resolve major conflicts around the world

And with all of that in mind, have a happy new year, and I look forward to ‘09 and to what it will bring.

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