Grasshopper
Progress begets progress
May/03/2010 03:42 PM
With the Qt SDK beta becoming available, and mostly pen-and-paper work performed so far towards implementing my apps, I've migrated to Qt SDK for development. Nokia's progress on Qt has in turn affected progress here on 'Grasshopper'.
Sadly, the Qt SDK doesn't support Mac OSX (yet?) so I am left either using Windows or Linux. I selected Windows, if only because I need to keep a working Windows virtual machine around for my day-job.
What does this mean? Well, I've made some significant head-way on 'Grasshopper':
On paper, the design is complete. I know every feature that I want to include in version 1 of the software and I have a usable and well thought-out interface designed for every feature. Transitions between the interface elements (ie: how to navigate the app) have been drawn up in such a way that (hopefully) I'll be able to reuse a lot of the design elements for multiple parts of the app.
Now that I'm using the Qt SDK, Im getting into actually coding the darn thing instead of just revising my visual state-machines. The UI is roughly 30% complete and the back-end code stubbed out with a relatively clean interface for implementing the heavy-lifting code. I do my coding over the weekends, and expect to have an initial version of my UI functioning (without back-end data loads and stores) by the end of this upcoming weekend. That is very soon. I went from a solid idea on paper to a partially working prototype in one weekend, and will have a fully functional demo of the UI in a second weekend of work. Linking in the back-end data support will likely take a couple weekends as well, giving me an estimated one month before my first alpha release is compiled and running.
Once I get to beta I'll post the project's real name and some teaser videos - and possibly distribute a version for testing and feedback before finalizing and posting the app to the Ovi store.
Qt is fantastic - I'm really happy to be working with it. If development proceeds this easily for 'Locust' I'll be very happy indeed :)
-jared
Sadly, the Qt SDK doesn't support Mac OSX (yet?) so I am left either using Windows or Linux. I selected Windows, if only because I need to keep a working Windows virtual machine around for my day-job.
What does this mean? Well, I've made some significant head-way on 'Grasshopper':
On paper, the design is complete. I know every feature that I want to include in version 1 of the software and I have a usable and well thought-out interface designed for every feature. Transitions between the interface elements (ie: how to navigate the app) have been drawn up in such a way that (hopefully) I'll be able to reuse a lot of the design elements for multiple parts of the app.
Now that I'm using the Qt SDK, Im getting into actually coding the darn thing instead of just revising my visual state-machines. The UI is roughly 30% complete and the back-end code stubbed out with a relatively clean interface for implementing the heavy-lifting code. I do my coding over the weekends, and expect to have an initial version of my UI functioning (without back-end data loads and stores) by the end of this upcoming weekend. That is very soon. I went from a solid idea on paper to a partially working prototype in one weekend, and will have a fully functional demo of the UI in a second weekend of work. Linking in the back-end data support will likely take a couple weekends as well, giving me an estimated one month before my first alpha release is compiled and running.
Once I get to beta I'll post the project's real name and some teaser videos - and possibly distribute a version for testing and feedback before finalizing and posting the app to the Ovi store.
Qt is fantastic - I'm really happy to be working with it. If development proceeds this easily for 'Locust' I'll be very happy indeed :)
-jared