Anyone working on neat hobby projects?

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audwinc
Posts: 12
Joined: Thu Sep 02, 2010 11:46 am

Anyone working on neat hobby projects?

Post by audwinc » Wed Sep 08, 2010 9:20 am

What Lisp-based projects are you working on that you would not mind having some help with? I would not mind cutting my teeth on something that seems interesting in my after-job-hours spare time, and I could benefit from having my code reviewed.

nuntius
Posts: 538
Joined: Sat Aug 09, 2008 10:44 am
Location: Newton, MA

Re: Anyone working on neat hobby projects?

Post by nuntius » Wed Sep 08, 2010 9:56 am

Define neat. ;)

I started by writing some image processing code, then writing a couple apps with some opengl stuff (see also cl-opengl), then gui stuff (see LTK and the ABLE editor).

Most of my effort lately has been focused on finding better ways of documenting and managing CL packages. This mostly involves redesigning LibCL, as well as some private sketches of replacements for ASDF.

Tim Daly and friends could always use help on the open-source computer algebra package Axiom and its forks OpenAxiom and FriCAS. These have a very mature codebase, but are undergoing changes in documentation, GUI, source compilation, etc. I believe they wanted to add a lazy streams system; that could be layered on top of clazy or perhaps funcallable objects (things I didn't understand back when the idea first came up).

Others do AI, music, games, compiler design, etc...

So what are your interests?

audwinc
Posts: 12
Joined: Thu Sep 02, 2010 11:46 am

Re: Anyone working on neat hobby projects?

Post by audwinc » Wed Sep 08, 2010 2:28 pm

Define neat. ;)
Time to dust off the marketing boots. :) Thank you for posting these.

I checked out the projects you listed, and most do not indicate what kinds of help they need or where they plan to go in the future. I could not quickly find bug reports or feature requests. I suppose I would need to contact people directly, but I am left in a position where I am not sure how I could help, given my newbieness. I have to admit I am a little scared to approach without at least trying to submit a patch in my cover letter. :)

Does anyone else have projects to post?
So what are your interests?
I am curious about the other categories you mentioned. My interests fall along the lines of games and music, but I am open to other areas. I am just browsing right now. Anything you list is good, not just for me but also for other readers.

Duke
Posts: 38
Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2009 10:40 pm
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Re: Anyone working on neat hobby projects?

Post by Duke » Wed Sep 08, 2010 3:25 pm

There's a website for exactly this kind of thing... Here you go: http://openhatch.org/ Though, Lisp pickings look rather slim. :(
I checked out the projects you listed, and most do not indicate what kinds of help they need or where they plan to go in the future.
It might be better to work either on your own project that uses someone else's libraries, or on someone else's project that you use actively. You'll fix bugs, write extensions or docs, and submit patches just to be a good citizen. If the maintainers don't want your patches and/or 'sperg out at you for being a noob, that's mostly their problem. If they do like your work they might ask you to become a maintainer, knowing that you have a legitimate investment in the project, and that they won't need to babysit you too much.

For my part, I've found cl-v4l2 needs love, and I'm planning to give it some so I can get my own junk working.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." -Epictetus

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