on the topic of TAOO and other solo projects.

[Andre Garzia]

Xavier,

maybe the "problem" with TAOO is that it's so tuned to your workflow  
and the way you think, that we're not able to understand it due to  
the fact we're not you. Sometimes we build software to serve our own  
necessity and those softwares are the hardest to explain for they  
need to serve only for us, they were not created so that everyone  
could understand them.

Once I was talking with Richard and he told me about tools and  
applications and their differences. Wondering about it later, I  
grokked that there are pieces of code that seems overhelmingly  
obvious for me but yet, would baffle a third party. That is not  
because the code is so difficult that someone would have a hardtime  
understanding but it's hard to understand because the software was  
custom built to serve my needs and the way I think.

To illustrate, let me tell you of a software that I use all the time  
while coding in Rev and yet I never shared. I call it "Alfred", it's  
as hard to explain as TAOO for it's very abstract, yet I make use of  
it everyday. Alfred is a stack, with only one input field and nothing  
more. The heart of Alfred is a clever RegEx generator/parser that is  
generated and executed at runtime. See, no one can understand it!?!?  
Now, let us explain what problem Alfred solves so that people can  
understand about it. One thing I hate is to keep switching  
applications, I like the apple newton model where everything is at  
your fingertip, one feature I like best of the newt is the "Assist"  
feature that enables me to write phrases like "have lunch with  
britney spears tomorrow" and it will parse it for me and book an  
appointment with britiney spears for me tomorrow in the calendar,  
also it will fetch britney contact from the contact database if  
present. I can almost talk with a newt using the Assist feature. I  
missed that on my mac, so I built Alfred to clone that, by clever use  
of RegEx expressions I can tell alfred to do things for me, like  
booking appointments, stick notes, sending emails, browsing to  
pages.... So in the end, what Alfred enables me is never to leave Rev  
and work from there. Alfred is tied to iCal, Apple Mail and  
AddressBook so it can use data from all this applications (even the  
terminal is now hooked, sending shell commands). If I simply shared  
Alfred, people would look and ask all sorts of questions like why  
he's generating the parsing routine at runtime? Thats why I never  
shared the thing, until I polish it so anyone can understand and make  
use of it, it will stay at my HD (and in the HD of those that want to  
see my spaghetti code).

Maybe you should start thinking as a stranger, like, would a stranger  
without my background, understand this? One thing I learned from  
Sivakatriswami is that "documenting is half the fun"™ By documenting  
as you code, you'll sure make TAOO more understendable for us. Like,  
make a pool, let the community ask questions, go building on top of  
those questions like a FAQ, then, some time later, it will be easy to  
understand TAOO

Cheers
andre