G
gavinconrad85
Recently for the past six months I began development on a software
platform which i had long been dreaming of tackling. It started with
years of deep thought and no actual code, and now finally I am finding
the time to begin implementing some of my ideas.
I know years of thought make the idea sound rather dramatic or
profound, and in some way it does feel that way to me. Of course what
might sound like a big deal to me could be shot down as a "done it
already", but I'm figuring why not give it a shot ?.. send it out
there and see what comes back. After all the internet is filling up
with so many different projects open source or otherwise that cover a
multitude of different topics, overcoming similar challenges that it
gets difficult to keep up and not begin reinventing the wheel
inadvertently every now and then.
---------- OOP Rant/Personal Beliefs on the topic --------------
One theme i see consistent within the development community
(developers that do Java, C++, or otherwise) is the cryptic nature in
which we tend to help each-other in forums and other mediums. I know
mentioning this will get me flamed big time, but I figured I'd mention
it as it is sort of a basis or theme/culture centered aspect of the
project which should be set early on. In fact, the very language of
Java could be described as focusing more on being a purist Object-
Oriented platform than anything like a syntactically clean/efficient
one. And I'm not just talking about eye candy either when I mention
syntax. OOP is practically a religion to most of us, and I wonder if
the ends justify the means when it comes to actually implementing
purist goals associated with the Object Oriented organizational
paradigms.
What it comes down to, to me personally, is that OOP drives a
developer to follow a train of thought that is enforced, and in all
actuality could be absolutely implemented completely different ways by
different people, with a goal I assume as being reusability and
controlled organization. My previous statement could be picked at a
billion different ways but my main point is that purist OOP could be
becoming (or always has) a less important goal, in fact to the point
of being distractive to the main goal which is to actually MAKE
programs and not OOP.
--------- END OOP Rant
---------------------------------------------------
Personal beliefs aside, the goal of this project would be to develop a
runtime built inside Java that would run interpreted code (Beanshell
so far) with built in "hooks" to allow for distributed communications
between smaller programs (scripts to be interpreted). The runtime
would run these programs, and have pre-developed tools inside it to
make communications between multiple programs seamless. The goal of
this is to build a larger community of programs on a linked network of
runtimes across the LAN or Internet.
Security is an important issue when tackling distributed
communications between apps in their runtimes and I have experience in
implementing encryption within Java (currently testing Blowfish
encryption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowfish_(cipher)) and
also utilizing WHIRLPOOL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHIRLPOOL)
cryptographic hash functions. The key is to make fundamental things
such as communications/security built into the platform and out of
sight. Though these tools can be heavily modified, or even replaced
with improved versions over time and the entire community as a whole
can benefit from these upgrades. The idea is keeping everything
simple, connected and modular.
With these basic goals outlined slightly in this post, I am trying to
gauge interest in such a platform which I plan to open up to be free
to use by anyone in the future. I hope to get feedback which outlines
concerns or suggestions for bettering such a platform, and please
limit the comments to just these constructive points and without
flames/bashing of any nature. If I receive enough feedback I would be
happy to implement many of your suggestions if you have any and build
this out to something that can be useful to your individual goals. I
have no idea how this will go but I thought it was worth a mention. If
feedback is good I will elaborate on the design I have in mind
further.
Kind regards,
Gavin Conrad
platform which i had long been dreaming of tackling. It started with
years of deep thought and no actual code, and now finally I am finding
the time to begin implementing some of my ideas.
I know years of thought make the idea sound rather dramatic or
profound, and in some way it does feel that way to me. Of course what
might sound like a big deal to me could be shot down as a "done it
already", but I'm figuring why not give it a shot ?.. send it out
there and see what comes back. After all the internet is filling up
with so many different projects open source or otherwise that cover a
multitude of different topics, overcoming similar challenges that it
gets difficult to keep up and not begin reinventing the wheel
inadvertently every now and then.
---------- OOP Rant/Personal Beliefs on the topic --------------
One theme i see consistent within the development community
(developers that do Java, C++, or otherwise) is the cryptic nature in
which we tend to help each-other in forums and other mediums. I know
mentioning this will get me flamed big time, but I figured I'd mention
it as it is sort of a basis or theme/culture centered aspect of the
project which should be set early on. In fact, the very language of
Java could be described as focusing more on being a purist Object-
Oriented platform than anything like a syntactically clean/efficient
one. And I'm not just talking about eye candy either when I mention
syntax. OOP is practically a religion to most of us, and I wonder if
the ends justify the means when it comes to actually implementing
purist goals associated with the Object Oriented organizational
paradigms.
What it comes down to, to me personally, is that OOP drives a
developer to follow a train of thought that is enforced, and in all
actuality could be absolutely implemented completely different ways by
different people, with a goal I assume as being reusability and
controlled organization. My previous statement could be picked at a
billion different ways but my main point is that purist OOP could be
becoming (or always has) a less important goal, in fact to the point
of being distractive to the main goal which is to actually MAKE
programs and not OOP.
--------- END OOP Rant
---------------------------------------------------
Personal beliefs aside, the goal of this project would be to develop a
runtime built inside Java that would run interpreted code (Beanshell
so far) with built in "hooks" to allow for distributed communications
between smaller programs (scripts to be interpreted). The runtime
would run these programs, and have pre-developed tools inside it to
make communications between multiple programs seamless. The goal of
this is to build a larger community of programs on a linked network of
runtimes across the LAN or Internet.
Security is an important issue when tackling distributed
communications between apps in their runtimes and I have experience in
implementing encryption within Java (currently testing Blowfish
encryption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowfish_(cipher)) and
also utilizing WHIRLPOOL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHIRLPOOL)
cryptographic hash functions. The key is to make fundamental things
such as communications/security built into the platform and out of
sight. Though these tools can be heavily modified, or even replaced
with improved versions over time and the entire community as a whole
can benefit from these upgrades. The idea is keeping everything
simple, connected and modular.
With these basic goals outlined slightly in this post, I am trying to
gauge interest in such a platform which I plan to open up to be free
to use by anyone in the future. I hope to get feedback which outlines
concerns or suggestions for bettering such a platform, and please
limit the comments to just these constructive points and without
flames/bashing of any nature. If I receive enough feedback I would be
happy to implement many of your suggestions if you have any and build
this out to something that can be useful to your individual goals. I
have no idea how this will go but I thought it was worth a mention. If
feedback is good I will elaborate on the design I have in mind
further.
Kind regards,
Gavin Conrad