Software "Factory Field Trip"

[Robert Holder]

Did you ever go on a field trip when you were in school?  I went on a few of them, and always enjoyed it.  My favorite one was when we went to a bread factory--or commercial bread kitchen, or whatever you would call it where they make bread on an industrial scale.  That was my favorite one and I still remember how that place smelled to this day!

There is a kind of "field trip" sort of thing you can do in terms of software development, and you don't have to even leave your chair!  You can go check it out right now.  You can visit the Qt development IRC channel.

The point of this is NOT to try to learn Qt!  Trust me, that would be the wrong end of the pencil for you to try to start sharpening at this point in your learning!  :-)  Rather, the point would be for you to get a firsthand look at how some very senior, experienced software developers communicate with each other as they work on a large software project.  I find it to be an interesting process to observe.

That's a key point that is important to understand.  This development channel is not a place to ask programming language questions.  It's a place where very busy people are trying to get work done.  So if you go, please just observe, and do not post questions or comments--unless you are already a professional Qt Project Developer!  :-)  In that case, you would already know about this channel.  If you have never heard about this channel before, then you will not have anything to contribute there.  For example, since I don't work on any part of the Qt project, I have never asked a question or made a comment in that channel, I have only ever observed.

Part of what is fascinating to me about this is that recently, Nokia, the company that "owns" Qt, decided to convert the entire Qt software development process to "Open Governance."  This means that, unlike most large companies, they are conducting a large portion of their software development efforts in public.  This is not a new idea, and many projects (the Linux kernel, is a good example) have been doing this for a long time.

But one thing that is a bit different about the Qt Dev IRC channel discussions is that they happen in close to real time.  I believe most other software development discussions like this have taken place through things like listserv email lists, or on usenet.  Because this is IRC, the conversations have a bit more of a natural, real-time flow, and I have found it interesting to drop in now and then and observe.  If you connect to this channel and leave the window up for a few hours, you will very likely have a nice little software development conversation to read, that you might enjoy being exposed to.  You probably won't learn anything you can apply to your programming efforts right now, but it could be worthwhile to you to see how the pros work with each other.  I found it interesting to see how polite people are when there is some issue that might be frustrating to resolve.

The Qt development channel is #qt-labs at irc.freenode.net.  There are a number of nice IRC clients you can use to connect to freenode.  I use the Pidgin client:  http://www.pidgin.im/  however you can find a list of other IRC clients here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_Relay_Chat_clients

To be honest, a lot of what is discussed on #qt-labs is over my head!  :-)  But it is still interesting to me to see how those people work together.  I don't watch this channel every day, but maybe every week or two I might join and just leave the window up for a few hours, and then when I get a few minutes free, I'll go back and read through some of the discussion.  It's not always interesting, but sometimes it is.

If you have an interest, you can learn more about this Open Governance model and how people contribute to the development of Qt here:

http://qt.nokia.com/learning/online/talks/developerdays2010/tech-talks/qt-301s-open-governance-model/ 

http://qt-project.org/contribute 

...however, understand up front that Kevin has a plan for this programming class that involves other languages and subjects, and that this Qt stuff is outside of that.  I'm not trying to get you to start on learning Qt, but rather just trying to offer an example of a how a large scale open source project works, that is conveniently pretty public and that you can learn a little about how software development works from in the real world, and in the comfort of your home.  Don't be concerned if there is a lot there that you don't understand or recognize if you visit those two webpages or the #qt-labs IRC channel.  But for anyone who has any ambitions towards professional software development, it might be worthwhile to get some exposure to this kind of real world example of how software development works.

Hope you find it interesting!  :-)

--r

[Robert Holder]

Hm, that open governance model talk I think is an older one.  This one might be a little more recent, and accessible to newer people.  :-)  This is by Lars Knoll, the Chief Maintainer for the Qt Project:

http://qt-project.org/videos/watch/qt-roadmap-open-governance-and-qt-5 

...in fact, that is one of my favorite things about Qt, how many videos they have that are freely and publicly available at http://qt-project.org/videos  I really hope in the future, more companies and more groups behind technologies make more learning videos available online like this, to help people learn in all areas of software and computer technology.