Re: [Rosegarden-devel] Rosegarden-devel Digest, Vol 82, Issue 2

[D. M. M. <ros...@gm...>]

On 03/06/2013 10:00 AM, David Tisdell wrote:

> How hard would it be to learn qt with no programing background?

> ok with bash scripting.

What kind of complexity are we talking about with bash scripting? 
Programming logic is programming logic, for the most part.  Every 
language has different ways of achieving the same fundamental things. 
If you did BASIC on a Commodore 64 back in the day or Turbo Pascal or 
something like that, you have a programming background.

Before Rosegarden, I don't think I ever worked on anything that was 
complicated enough to involve one source file and I'm not sure if I ever 
wrote a header.  I had done a thing or two in C, a lot of stuff in 
Pascal, and I knew absolutely zilch about object-oriented programming, 
and figured the advent of OOP was the final coffin nail in any utility I 
could have ever had as a programmer.

I had some problem or other I wanted to work on that the damn lazy trio 
of Cannam, Bown and Laurent--worthless louts every one of them--wasn't 
getting done fast enough to suit me, and I bought a copy of "Learn C++ 
in 21 Days" and got to work on whatever the problem was.  Something with 
accidental spelling or LilyPond, I'm thinking.

It can be done.  I'm not particularly gifted at the coder's trade, which 
is why I drive a gasoline tanker for a living.  I figured all this cool 
Rosegarden experience would translate to the real world somehow, but it 
really doesn't.  My skillset serves only one purpose, and it's custom 
tailored to help me work on the one project.  I'm not the most effective 
developer here by a long shot either, but at Rosegarden "better than 
nothing" goes a long way.

"Better than nothing" is actually kind of a high bar though.  This was 
always a rotten project for anyone to cut his teeth on back in the glory 
days, and it's much worse now.  The most effective developers these days 
are extremely independent, and capable of working through incredibly 
complicated problems on their own.  There is nobody to offer help with 
any regularity but me, and I, folks, am basically an idiot.  Rosegarden 
is kind of like some big city built by giants that's currently run by a 
house elf or something, because the giants all got girlfriends and found 
better things to do.

If I ever find a girlfriend, I'm probably gone too, truth be told, but 
that's another story.

Anyway, David, you can probably do it, but the question is what do you 
want to do, and why?  If you want to accomplish something, the place to 
start is finding a goal, and then working through whatever you have to 
get through to achieve it.  Qt is probably the least of your worries. 
I'm probably better at Qt than any of the developers we have on staff 
right now who get real work done.  The real work doesn't really involve 
that much Qt.  It's more about getting into the heads of the giants and 
trying to figure out what the hell they were thinking, which is 
frequently not very obvious at all.  Rosegarden is not a friendly 
project to work on, I fear.

If you're determined enough, you can get there though.  Pick something 
you want to achieve, and go from there!
-- 
D. Michael McIntyre