Meeting tomorrow!

[Alan Dayley]

The next PLUG-Devel meeting is tomorrow.

What: PLUG-Devel Meeting
When: Thursday, March 4, 2004 at 19:00 (7:00 PM)
Where: Adtron Corporation, 3710 E. University Drive, Suite 4, Phoenix, AZ
Topic: "Tool Fest" discussion

We did not have a confirmed discussion lined up this month, part of the
reason for this last minute announcement.  It'll be hard to top last
month's excellent Eclipse presentation but this should be good.

"Tool Fest" is a silly name for a discussion idea I have wanted to carry
out for a while.  What tools to you use when you program?  What makes
programming easier, more fun or less tedious?  What could you not live
without as a way of getting programming done?  We will have a loosely
moderated discussion about programming tools.

To help the discussion here are few guide-lines:

1. For the purposes of this discussion a "tool" is
  - a program (editor, compiler, etc.)
  - hardware (USB drive, mouse, lamp, etc.)
  - technique (patterns, methodology, phylosophy, etc.)
  - a book or other knowledge source (like a web site or online society)
  - a person (co-worker, boss(?), teacher, etc.).

2. For now, a "tool" is NOT a specific language.  We can save language
pros and cons for another time.  For example, C++ (a language) would not
be a tool but opject oriented programming (a methodology) would be.  Got
it?

3. All tools discussed should be related to and usable on Linux or other
Free Software platforms.  Let's not discuss tools that can only be used on
proprietary platforms.  If it has both a proprietary platform and FS
platform version, that's cool.

4. I would prefer to discuss Free Software or Open Source tools but I
don't think we can eliminate proprietary software completely from the
discussion.  It would be nice to be able to download and use right away
any new things we learn about.

5. Come prepared to contribute.  We want to know from everyone.  You may
know a tool that that would be very useful to me.  Even little command
line tools are worth talking about.

With a semi-structured discussion I think we can all learn something new
or discover another perspective.

Alan