I don't do a lot with peer-networking sites. I've never had a blog. In fact, I don't really know what to write here, nor anywhere else on this site. I do, however, write software and I've never been paid for it. I started with BASIC on an Apple IIgs in 1991. My father fried the RAM around 1995, and the only thing available to program on was my HP-48g, which I programmed day and night for lack of a real computer. I lacked other programming resources until 2003, when I finally had a computer of my own. I sought out and learned what I know about programming independently, mostly through websites, message boards, manpages, tearing apart code I've come across, and coding for days at a time until I figure out how to make something work. Programming steals my life, so I try to save it for good ideas. It steals my sleep, my dreams, and even the world right in front of me. My life is elsewhere, yet I remain a slave to my text editor.
I'm not a professional developer, I don't have a degree in CS, nor will either apply to me in the future. I study cognitive science and mathematics. I'm sure I'll have more to say about that later.
I don't generally use IDEs and I don't have much of an interest in GUI programming. Most of what I develop takes the form of algorithms, frameworks, infrastructures, libraries, and many other things not readily usable by the non-programmer.
I have several "open-source projects," made so by virtue of being hosted as such, but I put most of my time into one. Ironically, the one that consistently has zero downloads. I actually don't program for others to use my work; I publish my work so my time doesn't go to waste. I'm a compulsive perfectionist with my code, so when I get something right I like the idea of someone else being able to come across it and see what I've done. I'd like to think that everything I write can be of some use to someone, but that really isn't the point.
This isn't to say I don't care about what I put out there or what other developers think. I often retract a download after noticing a misspelled word in the README for fear of publishing something with an error. I feel quite ashamed when I come across bugs in my own work, even in the alpha and beta versions. It always strikes me as a misrepresentation when I put my name on something with a bug.
I'm just starting to get into collaborative development for a research project I'll be working on. I'm the informal development lead, but the actual algorithm design will be done by computer scientists.
For now, please take a look at Resourcerver, my main project. I'd really like feedback on the design; however, please keep in mind it's only loosely related to dbus, dcop, etc. (multi-process app control vs. IPC framework.)
Kevin
