Post by xcessive on Oct 12, 2011 4:18:19 GMT
I'm sure those of you who are at least a little involved in the actual coding aspect of this community (amazingly there are a lot of people who seem to neglect the titular supposed animus of this forum) may have noticed there has been an ongoing emphasis on developing forum software. From memory there is currently: jBoards, CentBB, rForums (I think, been a while since I heard anything from Russel), and supposed echnaret is doing something. In the past there have been others, I myself made one as an exercise to learn PHP (when I first started with the language) long, long ago, I believe there is still a thread on this board with a defunct link to it -- it was one of the first. In addition I also contributed a fair chunk of code to rForums a while back; needless to say, I am interested in forum software.
Let me make the crux of this post clear here in plain terms so there is no confusion (I do tend to ramble): I believe none of these pieces of software will go anywhere as long as they continue as they do. Why? Because it is complex software, and there is a lot of competition, and most importantly its no longer the 80s. Hobbyist development will almost never go anywhere if its based on an idea that has been done before.
I say this all because I am sick of seeing yet another project that wastes its creators time, and my time for looking at it. The only real chance at making a usable and viable forum system is with a core team of half a dozen good programmers, and numerous contributors. The most frustrating thing is that here, on cC, there is exactly that, and at some point most of these people have actually tried to make forum systems, so there is both the required skill level, and interest. The problem seems to be a lack of cohesion. Everyone wants to go solo. So my plea is this:
If you are going to make forum software, don't go it solo unless you are doing it for your own practice or personal interest. If you want to do it seriously set up a full scale group project with some sort of SVN and development network. It is getting ridiculous how many hours people sink into doing the same amateur forum crap -- imagine if all those hours were pooled together and properly coordinated.
Let me make the crux of this post clear here in plain terms so there is no confusion (I do tend to ramble): I believe none of these pieces of software will go anywhere as long as they continue as they do. Why? Because it is complex software, and there is a lot of competition, and most importantly its no longer the 80s. Hobbyist development will almost never go anywhere if its based on an idea that has been done before.
I say this all because I am sick of seeing yet another project that wastes its creators time, and my time for looking at it. The only real chance at making a usable and viable forum system is with a core team of half a dozen good programmers, and numerous contributors. The most frustrating thing is that here, on cC, there is exactly that, and at some point most of these people have actually tried to make forum systems, so there is both the required skill level, and interest. The problem seems to be a lack of cohesion. Everyone wants to go solo. So my plea is this:
If you are going to make forum software, don't go it solo unless you are doing it for your own practice or personal interest. If you want to do it seriously set up a full scale group project with some sort of SVN and development network. It is getting ridiculous how many hours people sink into doing the same amateur forum crap -- imagine if all those hours were pooled together and properly coordinated.
