Lately I've been working on a newsreader with a
SSL-enabled Web user interface, which I have given the
incredibly creative name of "WebNews". I also wrote a Perl
module documentation tool. I intend to release these as
open-source, when I've finished with them.
It's amusing to me how anything which requires using a
program other than a web browser these days is considered
hard to use.
I also seem to have a different philosophy about
releasing my projects than other people do -- I try to
finish them first, then release them. I guess this comes
from my shareware-writing roots. I wish I had more time to
work on them, though; then I might actually make releases
more often.
Automake and
autoconf are my friends, but I don't think they're the
best possible implementation. I'd like to have a framework
written in something more high-level than M4 and shell, with
a repository of useful tests online (like CPAN's module
repository.)
At work, I have been customizing STk, a Tk-enabled
Scheme interpreter, for UC Berkeley's lower division
programming classes. Scheme is a language which depresses
me, because of its beautiful theoretical design and the
sorry state of most of its implementations. I wonder how
much of this results from Scheme being a tempting language
to reimplement, because of its simple structure and
semantics, and the lack of massive user base for any one
implementation (unlike, e.g., Perl). Anyhow, enough
kvetching! You can look at my Scheme hacks here.