Author Archive

The design/implementation swindle

There is something deeply wrong to the way people in the IT field conceive the software development process. I wish all the people I worked with read this insightful article. Beware! If you’re a project manager or any “high level” software architect/designer/academic this article may change your life for good.

The major problem with this is that ALL of software is design. 100% of software is design from the high level architect-like design to the low-level design of a for-loop. The implementers of software are not human! I knew you suspected as much given how odd many programmers are. No, the implementers of software are actually ‘perfect’ machines.

Yes, all of software is design. There is no implementation. Pardon me as I stress this over and over. There is only high level and low level design. To mirror other fields of engineering: A civil engineer also has high level design, such as choosing the type and shape of bridge. A civil engineer also has lots of low level design, such as choosing the kind of screws, where they go, where to weld…

Please welcome Minitube 0.6!

0.6 Version 0.6 is out now! This cycle has seen an increase of contributions from various people around the world. In particular Kiwamu Okabe, from Japan, magically appeared on Gitorious and added HTTP proxy support and a Japanese translation.

I think I’m going to take a break and slow down development a bit. I have a couple ideas for two new projects and I’d like to take the time needed to experiment. It is always Qt stuff. After years of server-side programming and Web development I guess I found my real interest: I just love to design the UI of native applications.

The Linux Magazine reviews Minitube

Marcel Hilzinger wrote a very positive review about Minitube. Thank you!

Minitube in FreeBSD

Minitube landed in the FreeBSD ports. Yeah!

In other news, among various blogs talking about Minitube, Tony Iliakostas wrote an outstanding (Mac-oriented) review of Minitube.

And now for the bad news, Google banned the Minitube project page from their search results, maybe because lots of people are linking to it. Way to go, Google!

Minitube 0.5 is out!

Grab it now!

Minitube and Linux packages

I just discovered that the (quite obscure) PLD Linux distribution and has been quietly packaging Minitube since the very beginning. Also SourceMage Linux has a Minitube 0.3 “spell” available.  These add up to Gentoo, Fink, ArchLinux and Pardus. Very nice!

PS. My secret dream is having Minitube in Debian. /me crosses fingers

Google suggest in Minitube

Google suggestI just finished to add Google suggest support into Minitube. It was quick since there is a Qt example available that does just that. I guess everybody knows what I’m talking about. When you type a keyword a little popup appears under the search box with the most popular keywords matching what you have typed.
The implementation is a bit buggy but already usable, the code is available on Gitorious. I’m not sure if additionally showing the user’s own previous searches would be a good idea… maybe not. Both from a privacy and performance point of view.

In the meantime, Stefan Brueck has been working on building Minitube on Windows. He has an experimental build, that basically does everything apart playing videos ;)

Not a bad start for this development cycle! Once the completion stuff is really perfect, I think I’ll work on some minor polishing and release 0.5 right away.

Minitube status update

The latest weeks have been exciting. The development of Minitube is such a gratification for me. I’ve been following Qt development for literally years and from time to time experimented with C++. But I never had something really useful to do with it. I mean, until now.

The response to Minitube has been overwhelming. Lots of downloads, emails, comments, two people volunteering for translation and even a 1€ donation ;)

But the most exciting thing for me is the inclusion in some Linux distributions, namely Gentoo and ArchLinux. Also the Fink project added Minitube to its repository. I’m very pleased to be able to give something back to the Free Software community.

These days I’m readying the code base for the 0.3 release. So stay tuned!

Workflow

ciao flavio,

come va? spero bene.
ti invio in allegato un power point nel quale troverai l’info richiesta.
per ulteriori informazioni non esitate a contattarmi tramite email o
a questo numero +39 06 1111-1111

a presto e buon lavoro
nome_gruppo.ppt

Il giorno 19/mag/09, alle ore 16:25, Flavio Tordini ha scritto:

Ciao Gabriele,
ti prego gentilmente di comunicarmi il nome del gruppo o dell’artista
solista
che stai ascoltando. Daniele, che ci legge in copia, ne ha bisogno
per portare
avanti il suo progetto.

Grazie in anticipo,
Flavio

On Tuesday 19 May 2009 16:19:57 daniele wrote:
> Ciao Flavio,
> come va?
> a me bene…….
> Potresti chiedere a gabriele il nome del gruppo che sta ascoltandi
> ora?
> grazie
> Distinti saluti

C’è vita fuori del browser

Oggi ho rilasciato la prima versione di Minitube, il mio pet project attuale. Si tratta di un player nativo per YouTube. Niente browser, niente HTML, niente Flash. Naturalmente è allo stato embrionale e ci sono una infinità di problemi. Ma tutti sanno che si rilascia presto e spesso. Ancora manca il download per Windows: non ho ancora avuto il coraggio di installare i prerequisiti sul mio Windows inscatolato nel VMware, cioè svariati giga tra DirectX, Visual Studio e Qt.

Minitube è adatto per ascoltare musica da YouTube o per sedersi sul divano o dietro 3 etti di pasta a guardare  un po’ di video randomici. Più o meno come si fa quando si guarda la tv. Spero di riuscire a mantenere alta la motivazione per portare Minitube a uno stato funzionante. Buona visione!