Over the next month or so you will notice our program collection beginning to build up again. We have noticed many issues with how we were doing things in the past, and with our new system, hopefully many of these issues will no longer be of any concern to us. The main issues that we faced last time were:
- Maintenance of our programs
- Quality of programs
- Speed of production
- Simplicity and Compatibility
Maintenance:
We are taking new measures this time around to address concerns of maintenance. Programmers who are officially programming for us will now have their projects tracked with revision control, which allows us to collaborate on projects effectively. We are also now supporting primarily Python and Java development, though we will allow Visual Basic once we re-release the CodexChex for those. Visual Basic is old news though.
Quality of Programs:
Again, because our programmers are now working on a collaboration platform, the quality of our programs will be enhanced in the sense that projects will be worked on by multiple programmers. As well, our new Bug Tracker system allows us to address any shortfalls in our programs in an organized and timely manner.
Speed of Production:
I have to admit -- Hydrogen made me fall in love with Python.
It is such a nice language that has the simplicity of VB (more on next point) and the power and compatibility of Java. With pre-made libraries to assist our programmers along, we hope to make program production at Neocodex as simple as possible. Even if you are not a Python fan -- we will still support Java and limited Visual Basic projects.Simplicity and Compatibility:
No longer are we going to sit around and let dependencies get in people's way. Making our end-users run around for multiple "Runtime File" packages and "Control Pads" and "DLL files" is a crock of shit.
We've taken the liberty to package every single dependancy you will ever need (theoretically -- its not perfect yet) into an installer that actually checks to make sure you have the necessary elements installed. You won't need to download three or four seperate packages, with some on different sites. Just this: ncdx Python Runtime File PackageBecause the CodexChex in Python use a Java "bridge" library, we require that our users have the JRE 1.6 installed, but the Runtime File Package will determine this for you.
Luckilly, this also gives our users Java support automatically so it's pretty much like a universal installer.We will also be supporting Mac OS X in the near future, if things go according to plan. We have tested our programs on Mac OS X without the CodexChex and they are fully functional. The only thing not working at the moment is our Python CodexChex, but it seems like such a trivial error that we should have it sorted out in no time. This will allow us to support an ever-growing number of Mac users.
We will not officially be supporting Linux. While our Python code would actually work the best in Linux, we cannot distribute them in sealed executable form at this time
That is all. Enjoy!
