Thursday, October 13, 2005
Collaborative Programming
I've been spending quite a bit of time lately developing some software for research project, and as I switch back and forth between my code and the various web sites that give me the solutions to my problems I suddenly thought: How on earth did we ever get any programming done without the internet? Some of the problems I have run into (and I'm sure mine are far less complex than for most commercial programmers) would have gone unsolved for a long time, perhaps forever, if I hadn't been able to type a quick search into Google to get the answer. Maybe the complexity and scope of application development has grown in relation to the resources that are now out there to help you get stuff done, but still it's something to ponder.
This thought came back to me today when I saw that Borland have just released a programming environment that supports collaboration with other programmers, directly through the programming interface. I've solved problems before using Remote Assistance in Windows, which lets you share a screen, but the Borland version is another step altogether.
Programming used to the preserve of focused individuals working alone at a single machine. I wonder now if it has its own social ecology growing up all these sites where people explain how to bind a datasource to a listbox in C#.
I've been spending quite a bit of time lately developing some software for research project, and as I switch back and forth between my code and the various web sites that give me the solutions to my problems I suddenly thought: How on earth did we ever get any programming done without the internet? Some of the problems I have run into (and I'm sure mine are far less complex than for most commercial programmers) would have gone unsolved for a long time, perhaps forever, if I hadn't been able to type a quick search into Google to get the answer. Maybe the complexity and scope of application development has grown in relation to the resources that are now out there to help you get stuff done, but still it's something to ponder.
This thought came back to me today when I saw that Borland have just released a programming environment that supports collaboration with other programmers, directly through the programming interface. I've solved problems before using Remote Assistance in Windows, which lets you share a screen, but the Borland version is another step altogether.
Programming used to the preserve of focused individuals working alone at a single machine. I wonder now if it has its own social ecology growing up all these sites where people explain how to bind a datasource to a listbox in C#.
Comments:
``switch back and forth between my code and the various web sites."
Dual display is pure luxury for this kind of work!
I generally do all my work on one monitor (be it LaTeX, Java, HTML, PHP, ...) and have what ever else is useful on the other (terminal, browser, dvi viewer, the web page I am developing) its great for productivity.
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Dual display is pure luxury for this kind of work!
I generally do all my work on one monitor (be it LaTeX, Java, HTML, PHP, ...) and have what ever else is useful on the other (terminal, browser, dvi viewer, the web page I am developing) its great for productivity.
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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