[growl-development] A call for new developers

[Christopher Forsythe]

Folks,

If anyone on this list is interested, or knows someone who is, we're currently looking to add a few people to our relatively small development team here.

Knowledge of Cocoa, Carbon, Web style tech (css, xhtml, etc), makefiles, package maker and AppleScript are all things which would be beneficial, but are not required to start out with.

Benefits include:

- Learning to work with a team

- Pick up knowledge about current source code control technologies

- Learn/expand on your knowledge a programming language while having fun

- Put Growl onto your resume. We have Growl Development alumni working for some of the most well known software houses out there.

If you are interested, please either reply to this thread or to me directly.

Chris Forsythe

Growl Project Lead

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[Mijail]

Hi there,

I'm interested (I've been flirting for some time with the idea of getting into Growl development), but I don't really understand the proposition.

I could download the sources / clone the repository and start hacking; what is the exact difference with being in the development team?

[Peter Hosey]

On May 23, 2010, at 05:57:39, Mijail wrote:
> I could download the sources / clone the repository and start hacking; what is the exact difference with being in the development team?

The only real difference is push access: Growl developers can push directly to our growl-development repo.

That said, cloning the repo and hacking on your clone separately is a great start. You can export the commits and send them to us as patches, as outlined here:

http://growl.info/documentation/developer/growl-contributor-handbook.php

[BJ Homer]

I'm interested in contributing, but need to figure out where to find time first. So until I figure that out, I'm probably not really available. Thanks for sending this out, though, because it will encourage me to find that time.

-BJ Homer

[MathCampbell]

I'm interested in helping out as a UI/Graphics artist...
I'm not much good at coding (I can do the basics but I'm really not up
to speed enough to fathom out how Growl works etc.) but I can do UI
work, and I'm actually a Graphics Designer by trade; I do icons etc.

I've done a bit of stuff with Rudy in IRC along with TheTick (dunno
whose id that is!) regarding the proposed re-design of the pref-pane's
UI. It was mostly last year, and I let things fester, but I think I
can find time now to help out on this, and it *really* needs a re-
design I think...

Should I post into the thread on the UI re-design?


Math

[Chris Forsythe]

On Jun 5, 2010, at 9:18 AM, MathCampbell <math.c...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Please do, or start a new one.

Chris

>
> Math

[Peter Hosey]

On Jun 5, 2010, at 07:18:29, MathCampbell wrote:
> … TheTick (dunno whose id that is!) …

The_Tick is Chris Forsythe.

[Christopher Forsythe]

You could, and that's fine. But there's more to a project than that.

If everyone on the project just did that, we probably would not be where we are today. The difference between a group of people working towards a common goal, communicating, with direction and a group of people who just randomly work on things is typically staggering.  Part of the point is that you would be a member of the development team. Part of the point is that you would have say in what you do, but with the goals of the entire group in mind, not just working on a whim.

Back when we had a larger group of people, this would have been more apparent. 30 people doing random things would have gotten the job done, but not in a manner that was likely shippable. We pride ourselves in having something which people believe should be part of OS X, and that has to show through.

Unfortunately in the last 2 years or so, we've only had a handful of developers with a large load of work. However, this group of developers has been able to put out an amazing amount of work. Direction helps with some of that, working on a team helps with a lot of that.

Also, once you have enough work into the project and have become something more than just a contributor, you have a larger say in the direction of the project. Evan, Rudy and Peter for instance all can call me at any time (well almost, they'll have to watch my newborn if they call at 2 am) on the phone to just talk about where the project is going, and we can discuss things.

A good example of this is the applications tab. A few years ago, one of the developers at the time, James, met me for coffee one day. We sat down and then spent the next 4 hours talking about how the applications tab was, and should be. The new applications tab was entirely based on that conversation. Whether you like or dislike it, James and I pretty much determined how it should look and behave based on our conversation. I do not believe someone who simply submits patches would have the same influence.

My apologies for the delay in responding to this by the way, it was a good question and deserved a good deal of thought. There are likely other benefits I have not explained (an @growl.info email address if you want one, for example).

Does this answer your question?

Chris

[Peter Hosey]

On Jun 8, 2010, at 07:49:18, Christopher Forsythe wrote:
> I do not believe someone who simply submits patches would have the same influence.

Not because we would refuse them it; rather because they would not have attempted to have it.

The very definition of being part of the team—aside from more tangible aspects like a growl.info email address—is that you participate in our decisions as well as the writing of code. Weighing in on decisions *and* regularly submitting code makes you part of the team.

Most everything else is just a formality.

[Daniel Siemer]

Hello all,

I realize this reply is a bit of a resurrection of this thread, but I
figure you are still probably looking somewhat.

My name is Daniel Siemer, and I would be interested in joining Growl
as a developer. I am presently a CS student at Wichita State
University, getting ready to finish in a couple semesters. I have
been developing for the iPhone for the last year and a half, with some
dabbling on the Mac. I wrote an application (iNXT Remote) to control
a Lego Mindstorms robot and the server for OSX to forward commands
from the phone to the robot. I recently finished the 2.0 versions of
these, having moved all the control and model code out into a reusable
library/framework. I feel I learned a decent amount doing this, but
that to go further, I need a project that will challenge me and
teachers who can help me get there. I admit that my experience and
knowledge aren't nearly as good as they could be, but I'm a willing
and fast learner. I have been using source control, although not
heavily, and will need to learn to work with a team that is using
branches and merging and such. Growl seems to be a very well thought
out project from what I have seen of it, and will provide a challenge
for me, but it doesn't seem completely overwhelming like some projects
out there. I look forward to the coming UI redesign, and the GNTP
stuff sounds very interesting.

If you think you can use me, let me know and we can talk more. While
school is starting back up in August, and I will still need to provide
some support and work to my iPhone app, I feel I will have plenty of
time to give to this project.

Daniel Siemer

-ps, I have been hanging out in the #growl channel as Falkenberg

> > growl-developm...@googlegroups.com<growl-development%2Bunsubscr i...@googlegroups.com>
> > .

[Christopher Forsythe]

It sounds like you'd have fun on the project then. :)

So typically I ask people what they are passionate about within the context of Growl. If you pick something on the project to work towards that you want, then it makes things easier to start out with.

Chris

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[Daniel Siemer]

From trying to figure out the prefpane when I was a new user,
usability of the prefpane.

The existing one works, but the concept shots posted awhile back look
like they would be much easier to work with for a user. I would like
to help on the code for UI redesign, and I understand that Math is
working on the design side. I can start looking at the existing code,
to work on understanding how things work =), and if there are any tips
you have for working with mercurial (I admit to liking having gui's to
work with rather than command line), I would appreciate them.

On Jul 21, 9:44 am, Christopher Forsythe <ch...@growl.info> wrote:
> It sounds like you'd have fun on the project then. :)
>
> So typically I ask people what they are passionate about within the context
> of Growl. If you pick something on the project to work towards that you
> want, then it makes things easier to start out with.
>
> Chris
>

> > > > growl-developm...@googlegroups.com<growl-development%2Bunsubscr i...@googlegroups.com><growl-development%2Bunsubscr

[Christopher Forsythe]

I think that's perfect, since he's looking at the applications tab right now.

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[MathCampbell]

Aye, sorry for the lack of progress on the UI redesign stuff; I had a
wedding I was heavily involved in, then a load of work came along,
then I got sick. Not my month, really.
Just doing some stuff in Photoshop now...
As I said to someone in IRC, I don't think the UI redesign-stuff will
take much actual coding, once the design decisions are made. Most of
it will be just moving bindings around, changing stuff in IB etc. But
it really will make a large difference to the average user. At the
moment, the UI is old and in some cases, dysfunctional. Fixing that
should obviously come before my efforts to "tart" things up a bit, but
I think we can get it looking good as well as being better from the
user's viewpoint to actually use...

On Jul 21, 10:59 pm, Christopher Forsythe <ch...@growl.info> wrote:
> I think that's perfect, since he's looking at the applications tab right
> now.
>

[Christopher Forsythe]

2.0 will require the changes you are working on. I'm currently thinking the Christmas time frame to start beta'ing 2.0, so that gives us a good 6 months to work on this stuff. Don't worry about the small stuff like this, we all have personal lives that come first. Just keep a goal in your head about hitting a certain time frame for each of your projects.

For you, I'd suggest considering each tab a project.

Chris

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