State Of The Code (1 Viewer)

[jsimmons]

I don't want to sound hyper-critical or unappreciative of what you guys are giving us, but I went through some of the code yesterday to try to figure out how to write a plug-in (since the wiki info is so far out of date that it's almost funny), and I gotta say - you guys need to work on code commenting and variable naming. Leaving it up to the designer to name your controls is - well - lazy, and it doesn't lend itself at all to self-documenting code. I understand that you guys are putting out a lot of code, but really...

Beyond that, is there any *current* documentation that discusses the organization of the code? I want to write a plug-in but the wiki documentation isn't helpful at all.

 

[tourettes]

Isn't it "State of the Code" instead of the "State Of The Code"?

As you might know there is lot of different people working with MP and that had been caused different naming contentions to be used (even when there are some guidelines available). For MP 1 it wonde definately change, hopefully for MPII we will have some nicer looking code available.

To be honest I'm much more worried about the code quality than the naming conventions.

 

[jsimmons]

Isn't it "State of the Code" instead of the "State Of The Code"?

As you might know there is lot of different people working with MP and that had been caused different naming contentions to be used (even when there are some guidelines available). For MP 1 it wonde definately change, hopefully for MPII we will have some nicer looking code available.

To be honest I'm much more worried about the code quality than the naming conventions.

Without decent documentation and establishing some standards for submitting code (including naming conventions and the inclusion of reasonably copious comments), we have no hope in hell of "contributing", and the quality of the code is pointless if it can't be easily maintained.

For instance, I'm trying to write a plug-in. The "How To Write A Plug-In" documentation is hopelessly out of date. The directory structure of the source code has evidently changed dramatically since the docs were written, and I'm essentially flying by the seat of my pants trying figure this stuff out. As it is, I've got my plug-in compiled, but where the hell do I put it? The folder specified in the docs does NOT exist, and on top of that, there doesn't seem to be a central binary folder - seriously - compiling the binaries to the source folder? Do they really expect us to manually move files around to get the compiled code to run?

Further, I tried to run the Configuration.exe program from it's compiled location, and I got an error saying that my system didn't support some TV thing, and then it crashed on me (I got the latest source code about an hour ago).

As long as this code has been around, I seriously expected a smoother experience. At this point, the code in SVN is useless until some guidance is provided. I left a response in the sticky thread about writing a plug-in, but it's been two weeks, and none of the main developers have responded.

If I'm completely off base here, I'd be happy to entertain any corrections to my misconceptions of the source and compiling thereof...

 

[Eeyore]

Without decent documentation and establishing some standards for submitting code (including naming conventions and the inclusion of reasonably copious comments), we have no hope in hell of "contributing", and the quality of the code is pointless if it can't be easily maintained.

I'm essentially flying by the seat of my pants trying figure this stuff out.

As long as this code has been around, I seriously expected a smoother experience. At this point, the code in SVN is useless until some guidance is provided.

If I'm completely off base here, I'd be happy to entertain any corrections to my misconceptions of the source and compiling thereof...

I agree with this 100%

I am more then capable of lending a hand to this project, in terms of skill and time, but with almost no commenting, documentation or specification, it is extremely difficult to get started

 

[tourettes]

I am more then capable of lending a hand to this project, in terms of skill and time, but with almost no commenting, documentation or specification, it is extremely difficult to get started

One good way to contribute to the project would be to write some documentation for other people The main reason why there aren't good / up to date documentation available is that people who are working with MP1 doesn't seem to like to write good code comments or especially like to skip writing the how to documentation for other developers. Unfortunately there is not much how to improve such as it only comes up to the people who are writing the code.

Hopefully that will change with MPII, but at least no one in the team is planning to write documentation or comment the code that will soon (in few years ) be replaced with somehting else.