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Tool of the month

Started by Brian Pritchett, 2009-02-06T15:31:26-06:00 (Friday)

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Brian Pritchett

In addition to Language of the month, I think a good idea would be to do "Tool of the month" to generate some talk.  These could be presentations about IDE's, libraries, debuggers, operating systems, etc. I've talked to a friend about putting together a talk about vim. I think this would help generate interest in CAOS since we would be having more meetings.  We could make the meetings kinda regular too, such as, the second week of the month we do the LOTM, and the fourth week we do the TOTM.

The goal of TOTM would, should, probably not be to teach everything about the tool, but just like LOTM, just generate some interest, introduce the tool, so you can go learn it on your own.  Example: in vim presentation we've been talking about, we would just introduce vim, tell people how to get it, teach people the very basics of it, and show what vim is capable of.

Whats everyones thoughts on this idea?

Brent Beer

>8{(

Brian Pritchett

we could even try to make the *OTM presentations coincide, ex: LOTM: pythong, TOTM: python debugger

delia feerer

i think it sounds like a great idea!

Mark Sands

Funny you mention that. VP Jarod Luebbert had that idea on his outline but neglected to mention it during his speech.. oh well. Great idea still!
Mark Sands
Computer Science Major

Jarod Luebbert

Sweet! I agree with Brian, we should definitely have a talk on VIM. Maybe someone could also talk about using Git or just source control in general. We'll try to figure something out at our officer meeting and get something set up soon. Keep the suggestions coming!
Jarod Luebbert
Computer Science Major

William Grim

If you want to do LOTM/TOTM, talk about Lisp and Emacs.  We use emacs extensively at Morgan Stanley.
William Grim
IT Associate, Morgan Stanley

raptor

I talked w/ Brian and believe I have an ingenious way to wrap this all up into a few monthly series.  This will be discussed in our officer meeting.

Scott
President of CAOS
Software Engineer NASA Nspires/Roses Grant

Tony

There are a ton of tools you guys could do talks on.  You could even do talks about simpler stuff like Subversion, IDEs, plugins, etc...

Just a few, subclipse (eclipse subversion plugin), firebug (debugger plugin for firefox), Dojo (JavaScript Library), JQuery (JavaScript Library), JUnit (Java Automated Test Plugin), Eclipse/Netbeans, Apache Axis2 (Works well for Java Servlets and Webservices).... 

There are tons out there.  I am sure you guys can think of more.  Where is Justin on this?  I know he has a ton.
I would rather be hated for doing what I believe in, than loved for doing what I don't.

Tony

Kewl starter video for creating an app that hits a webservice on a BlackBerry, if any of you have a BlackBerry.  iPhone is not the only one! lol.  This uses a plugin for Visual Studio, but they also have lot of support for Java Apps.
I would rather be hated for doing what I believe in, than loved for doing what I don't.

Justin Camerer


  • Source control software (Git my favorite and github.com makes it easy)
  • A testing framework (I'm a Ruby guy and I use RSpec)
  • A *real* text editor (All of the programmers that I know that are worth a damn use a real text editor and now how to use it well. Vim, Emacs, or even Textmate would be great)
  • The terminal (Posix only... no one cares about DOS. Some key things are piping, io redirection, grep, ssh, scp, etc.)
  • A feed reader (Seriously. Find some blogs about technologies you like and keep up with them)

I'm sure I could come up with more, if you're interested.
Justin Camerer
Do yo' chain hang low?

Travis W

This sounds like a really good idea.
I am always wanting to learn some more cool little things.
We should definitely do this.

Tony

I would be kewl to show everyone how to set up something like Apache Tomcat and how to port forward if they have a router, and set up their own webpage.  Would go great with something on JavaScript libraries like Dojo or JQuery. 

Also, cygwin and how to use that as a virtual unix environment on a windows box and how to ssh into other boxes and use scp.  Would be kewl.
I would rather be hated for doing what I believe in, than loved for doing what I don't.

Justin Camerer

JQuery is a great idea. Super powerful and super concise. I use it all the time and love it.
Justin Camerer
Do yo' chain hang low?

Tony

Yeah I believe that is what Google used to make iGoogle widget desktop stuff.  I have been using Dojo a lot but believe JQuery is better structured, easier to use, and has better documentation. 

Also, it would be helpful to do something on SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).  There is a lot that goes with this that also leads to the use of webservices, which can lead to showing people tools like XMLSpy or soapUI to hit webservices and Eclipse with Tomcat or Glassfish to create webservices and/or servlets.  Pretty fun stuff and is relatively a new way of thinking.  Some really good work can still be explored in this area.
I would rather be hated for doing what I believe in, than loved for doing what I don't.