WebIssues

Recently I came across Jordan Mechner's blog and the news that he just found the original source code of Prince of Persia on some old floppy disks after being lost for 22 years. That made me think about the time when I first played POP; I was no more than 10 years old and it was one of the first computer games I've seen. It was about that time when I started thinking that computers are fun and that I want to learn programming and create games myself.

I wonder if I also still have some floppy disks from Amiga 500 (and later Amiga 1200) hidden somewhere, with old pieces of code written by me. The oldest program that I wrote which survived to this day is called Polyglot. I wrote it in 1997 (being 15 years old) under the nick name "CompLex". It is still available in the Aminet archives, although only in binary form. I no longer have the source code. Maybe it still exists on the hard drive which I damaged many years ago by screwing it with too long screws which caused a short-circuit :). The oldest source code which I still have is Grape3D, written almost 12 years ago. It's almost completely unreadable, with lots of bitwise operations, pointer math, abbreviated variable names and literally zero comments, but it remains a really ingenious work of art that would be hard for me to match today.

I also read Jordan's diaries from making POP in late 80s and early 90s. It's really interesting and also quite inspiring. It also reminded me that I kept a diary between 1999 and 2007. It was mostly dedicated to various frustrations caused by my social life (or the lack of it), girls (or the inability to meet any), and general uncertainty of what I should do and what awaits me in the future. There are few mentions about the programs that I were writing at that time, because I deliberately avoided that topic. Anyway, from the perspective of a decade, life doesn't seem as bad as it used to, but it's definitely not getting any easier. It's just running much faster.

Jordan wrote a lot about his dilemma whether to write computer games or movie scripts. It's quite similar to the problem I currently have, trying to reconcile writing open source programs and the novel that I'm working on. I guess that's just the problem of people that are too creative :). There are a few major differences, though: Jordan had royalties from Karateka, and I need a full time job for living and for paying my loans; he was 21 when he started and I already turned 30 and have a wife and a kid to look after. So I'm not in a great position to disappear for half a year and write a bestseller book, or to invest in starting my own software company.

I really can't complain about my job, but I can't imagine working as an "outsourced" developer for the rest of my life, and being paid by the hour and not by the actual value of what I create. This is actually kind of frustrating and counter-productive, because the better and more efficient I work, the less I get paid for it. There are some ideas on the horizon how to change, or at least improve this situation. Perhaps I will finally be able to make some profit from the countless hours I spent on WebIssues. But so far, the only way I can do something to make me feel more accomplished is to pull all-nighters. I'm even doing it now writing this post. That's also not something I want to do for the rest of my life. Living from WebIssues royalties, travelling and writing books sounds much better.

Another lesson from Jordan's diaries is that even if you do a great job, there are still many things that may go wrong. Poor marketing decisions almost sank Prince of Persia, even though it was getting excellent reviews. I fear the same may happen to the commercial version of WebIssues. I know the value of this project; it can successfully compete with other applications, and the competition in this sector of the market, both open source and commercial, is very strong. But being able to make a profit from it is a completely different story. Of course, the only way to find out is to take the chance, and I will do it, but until I see some serious action going on, I will remain moderately enthusiastic about it.

Oh, and by the way, a new version of WebIssues is coming out probably next week. I'm just waiting for one Mac related bug to be fixed. And in the meantime I'm making some last minute improvements.

Both projects I'm involved in are close to their deadlines. The project I do "for living" will soon have the first release for 18 months and it's going to be quite a big event. However all coding is mostly done and the client is far behind with testing, so it looks like I'm out of the woods now and there will be no big rush in the nearest future. I have to devote more time to WebIssues because I have still a lot to do and I must make the release before the end of this month (i.e. before the wedding).

Initially I thought that the first alpha version will be done by the end of last year, then I moved the deadline to the first quarter of 2010 and I'm still far behind. At the moment there are no big changes and actually some of the features that existed in version 0.x will be temporarily removed (including watches and notifications), but on the other hand there will be a web client which is being created from scratch, without relying on any third party framework, and actually a custom sort of a framework is being created along the way.

I'm very satisfied with the results, but in the initial phase it requires a lot of work and rewriting some things many times until a good, reusable solution is reached. Fortunately there is no pressure from marketing or sales (I guess that's one of the freedoms associated with free software). Besides I'm a bit oversensitive when it comes to code quality, but I treat WebIssues as some way of dealing with bad code offsets (although I must admit that my commercial project is not particularly bad code given the industry standards ;).

It's been a while since I wrote last time. Not because nothing has happened during the last few months, just the opposite. The most important news is that - just a few days ago - I got a mortgage loan and bought a flat in Gliwice together with my girlfriend. Getting the loan was a nightmare and at some point I started feeling like I was living in Orwell's world. Seeing all the ignorance and incompetence of people working in the banks I'm no longer surprised that we have the so-called global economic crisis. Fortunately, with help of some other people, we managed to do it in the very last moment. I think from the perspective of time the difficulties will only make the satisfaction greater.

Of course there's still a lot to do: we must do some renovation, buy furniture and everything else from a TV to cups and spoons. We won't move in sooner than in the end of May. Our plans, however, go much further than that - we already booked holidays in Spain in September and bought tickets for the concert of U2 in August. So it should be a good compensation for all the sleepless nights.

Another good news is that I assembled a small team of developers and we started working on version 1.0 of WebIssues. All my open source projects that I've released so far had the major version of "zero", so reaching version "one" will be a very significant milestone. Also all of them were in fact one-person projects (with small occasional contributions from others) and it's the first time I'm working with a real team in the free software world (professionally I've been a team lead in various projects for almost two years). Anyway I think now it's the right time to do that.

Oh how I just needed it! The good thing about having vacations in the second half of September is that you can make summer last a bit longer. The weather in the entire southern Europe was much more rainy than usually at this time, but it was still much, much better than in Poland. The result is that I came back very well tanned and obviously relaxed and full of energy. The city of Laganas located on the Zakynthos island was indeed a very nice place. I wouldn't recommend it if you prefer peaceful and quiet places, especially with all that young Englishmen having access to all-inclusive alcoholic drinks ;), but I personally don't mind it.

Just after returning, a few hours before the deadline, I made the final submission of WebIssues to the Qt Center Programming Contest. I want to make the final release of version 0.9.3 as soon as possible and immediately start working on the next version; there are a few cool ideas to put into life. Autumn and winter somehow make me more motivated to work on various things and to look for new opportunities, so I think that by the end of the year a lot of things may still go well.

Two days ago I was at the concert of Tool which was part of the Metal Hammer Festival in Katowice. It was their second concert I've been to, so I knew what to expect, but it still made an incredible impression. Why am I mentioning it? Besides the fact that I'm a big fan of their music, it was the first opportunity for a very long time to forget about my work, to meet and talk to interesting people and to rediscover various areas of life that I've almost forgotten.

Even though many things have changed for better recently, especially concerning my work, I'm still far from being satisfied with my life. And it occurred to me that the main reason is that I'm simply bored with things that take most of my time. I got a new project and it was quite an adventure, but now that it's reached a usable state I'm mostly doing project management tasks. And it's been more than year and a half that I've been working on WebIssues, with no longer break than a week or two. So even though I still have a lot of ideas, I feel that I must take a break and start doing something different.

WebIssues was meant to be something that people would actually use, and even though it's not widely known and doesn't have a lot of users, I think that goal was reached just enough to let it live on its own for some time. But the main reason I'm doing this is simply training my mind, not allowing me to forget the raw power of C++ in the "managed" world that live in and forcing me to think creatively rather than just following the customer's requirements. So now I would like to switch to a more conceptual project, something that I could simply enjoy when playing with.

There's no need to invent the wheel, two such projects already exist - Fraqtive and Descend. The former needs rewriting to Qt4 and improving the usability of the UI and seems like a good stepping-stone for a short time. The latter is still more like a contour of the idea, but it keeps appearing in my mind from time and whispering deceptively to bring my attention, so who knows. Well, while finishing the next release of WebIssues I will have some time to make up my mind.