I’ve been spending a lot of spare time recently building a desktop application aimed at geocachers and walkers called Ammotin. As it is approaching a point where is becoming useful, I’ve set up ammotin.com to track the development and gather feedback.
Stay tuned to ammotin.com for more updates!
Once upon a time, I used to do a lot of GUI app development. My professional career started back in 1993 writing Windows 3.1 apps in C, and continued for several years, switching to C++ and using the MFC framework. But from about 1998 I found myself steadily doing less native GUI application development, and more and more web server based work.
While I enjoy all the work I do, I do miss being closer to the machine. The average PC is ridiculously powerful these days, but your average web application can’t do much with that power.
I’ve switched my home desktop to Ubuntu recently, and loving it. But, there’s a few Windows apps I miss. What’s a developer to do? What is a developer, skilled in C++ GUI development, to do, eh? Answer me that.
The recent release of Qt4.5 and it’s accompanying licence change couldn’t have come at a better time. I had an itch to scratch, and it looked gooood. One simple install, and you have a great IDE, a GUI designer, and a stack of great classes and widgets. I was sold on the ease of integrating a WebKit browser and the fact I could build a ECMAScript based scripting engine for my app. But there’s so much more! I was a little skeptical of the smoke and mirrors behind the signals and slots paradigm, but having used it for a weekend, I’m sold.
Bottom line is that I spent more time writing my app than figuring out the framework. There’s hardly any “boilerplate” crap in each class. Once you’ve written your first signal and slot handler, you’re away. It’s all thriller, and no filler 🙂
As if that wasn’t exciting enough, recompiling for Windows and Mac is easy too. Qt doesn’t just get you closer to your machine, it gets you closer to *all* machines. Hallelujah, Flying Spaghetti Monster be praised, I’ve rediscovered a love of programming I didn’t know I’d lost.
Anyway…..
I don’t want to say too much about the app I’m writing, aside from the fact that it’s aimed at geocachers. It’s called Ammotin, and will probably get released much later in the year. I think it will be spectacular, because Qt has got me so fired up and focussing on the app, that I don’t need to worry too much about the framework.
Am I over excited?
I’ve formed a team to take on the Oxfam Trailwalker Challenge – a 62 mile walk on the South Downs that must be undertaken in less than 30 hours! Our training is well underway, and it looks like we’ll be shooting for around 25 hours.
On the big day I’ll be sending pics and reports to the team blog, and you’ll also be able to send us messages of support via SMS too.
We’re hoping to raise £1500 for Oxfam, so if you can possibly afford it, please consider sponsoring me.
You can keep track of our training and out how to sponsor us on our team blog at http://trailwalker.dixo.net