We’re moving!

No, no, no, not like that, just this blog is moving. 🙂 

I’m slowly creating a new blog at http://drautb.github.io, so head over there from here on out.

This has been….Sublime

After a chance discussion with a friend of mine, and a positive test-run on my work computer, I decided this week to reformat my hard drive and install Ubuntu 13.04. No dual-booting, no Windows VMs, just Ubuntu. I’ve been super pleased with it so far: it’s much faster and less buggy than the last time I tried it, and I haven’t been able to come up with any need that it can’t meet. Hooray.

Part of the reason I had been hesitant to leave Windows was Visual Studio. I like it. A lot. (Minus its slothfulness on my machine) I had never been able to find a comparable editor, IDE or build system for *nix that I was comfortable with. (I had written makefiles for some school courses, and tried to use them in personal projects before. No thanks!)

A few weeks ago though, I decided to give Sublime Text a serious go. I had used it a bit before, and it had some neat features, but I hadn’t really tried to get into it. After watching some video tutorials though, I was thoroughly convinced.

I abandoned the behemoth that is Visual Studio. For editing at least. I used Sublime’s build system to invoke the Visual Studio compiler, and continued on my merry way, overjoyed by pretty much everything about Sublime. Now…if only there was a way around maintaining makefiles if I switched to *nix…

Enter CMake. It’s a cross-platform meta-build system, and I love it. I give CMake a pretty simple file describing my project, and it generates build files for whatever system I’m on. Solutions for Visual Studio, XCode Projects, and of course, makefiles. Practically zero build system maintenance, more time to code, I’m a happy camper. It even locates third-party libraries you want to use automatically. The only downside is that “Getting Started” guides are a bit sparse, but it’s not too bad.

So here I am on Ubuntu, using Sublime Text and CMake for all my development needs. No more 5 minute waits for Visual Studio to get going, or intermittent 30 second freezes on Windows. Life is good.

Progressive Programming

The open source paradigm, though imperfect, has proven itself repeatedly to be a feasible development model for major software projects. Despite opposition and quiet failures, it continues to grow in popularity in the software world, boasting a passionate community and freedom from unnecessary bureaucracy. With nearly Utopian success stories, it’s difficult to imagine a project that wouldn’t succeed in a healthy open source environment. The advent of services such as sourceforge and github only add momentum to the open source movement, further pushing the software world in that direction. As more skilled and passionate individuals enter the industry, open source projects will continue to multiply and grow, rendering their commercial counterparts obsolete.