« Reading List: Next | Main | Solar System Live: Colour scheme selection »
Monday, July 2, 2007
The Hacker's Diet Online: Beta test concluded
The Hacker's Diet Online beta test program was concluded today and the application released into production. Anybody who wishes to use the online application may now create an account without the need of an invitation code. During the two month beta test process, more than 100 accounts were created by volunteer testers, whose exercising of the program and lucid reports of their experiences helped clear up numerous bugs and potential sources of confusion, as well as suggesting several new features which were added as beta test progressed. The development log lists all of the changes made since the start of the beta test program, and will continue to chronicle further changes. As promised, coincident with the end of the beta program, complete source code for the application has been released into the public domain; if you wish to install the application on your own Web server or use it as a “code mine” for developing your own Web applications, the more than 23,000 lines of code and documentation are now available for your downloading pleasure. If you'd just like to read the source code, you can do so with any PDF reader utility. I consider this production release “initial operating capability”. As is usually the case, once a program reaches that state, ideas for how to improve and extend it begin to pop up, seemingly faster than you can write them down. I expect the application will continue to evolve over the coming months, although after the last few months of intense concentration on this program, I may take a break and attend to other matters before diving back in to flat-out development. As always, comments, problem reports, and suggestions for improvements are welcome.Posted at July 2, 2007 22:09