Re: Requesting an Octave mentor

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 7:10 PM, Jordi Gutiérrez
Hermos<address@hidden> wrote:
> Hello, Octave devs.
>
> I'd like to try again to get into Octave development. I've realised
> that for the kind of work I want to do, being able to point at work
> I've done on Octave would be very good for my CV. I've tried in the
> past to get into Octave development, but I've never been able to find
> my way around the sources by myself.
>
> I'm therefore asking for a kind soul with pedagogical inclinations to
> help me get started, perhaps even with a pet project that they don't
> want to undertake themselves but are willing to direct. I would like
> to be able to coordinate work via email, and if time zones allow it,
> via IRC or some IM program. My time zone is UTC - 05:00 or UTC - 04:00
> depending on daylight savings time.
>
> Does anyone feel like teaching me about how Octave sources are laid
> out,

That's easy - the whole lot of Octave sources is a horrible mess of
ill-designed classes, random hacks, gotchas and incomprehensible
blocks of unreadable code that you just hope are never actually
executed. And I'm proud to have contributed some of the messiest
pieces myself :D

> how to start, how to find the functionality I may want to
> improve?

First, decide what functionality you want to improve; share your idea
and discuss the possible implementation. Bug hunting is also an
excellent way to get familiar with the overall Octave code.

cheers

-- 
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek
computing expert & GNU Octave developer
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz