The scientific art Build 0005

This is trapdoor.org - a site for open source software, and resources about professional (be that free or non-free) development.

Among our own (all opensource) projects are:

• Decorum - An ant plug-in to handle dependency management including sub-builds.
• FDMS-FS - FUSE Filesystem for Fostex FDMS v3
• Properties - An optimised library for addressing bean-style properties.

What is trapdoor.org about?

Phillosophically, Trapdoor.org is about quality software, and pushing existing technology to work for us. Often these two goals conflict, and we must strike a balance. I believe that OSS can offer this balance. It is often quicker to adopt new technologies, and it offers access to "bleeding edge" development. This is balanced by open access to the source code so that a large and broad audience can check, use and contribute to the code.

The software industry suffers from an abundance of poor designers, poor progammers, and poor programs. I believe the only way to engineer high quality software is to approach problems from an accademic standpoint, and apply that theory in a practical way. The practical application of this theory is what I would call the art of software engineering.

This site exists partly as a host for open-source projects. It also exists as a place to collect and publish ideas about the state of the software industry; in particular, over-hyped technologies. I'd like to think of it as a reality-check for the software industry.

Who is this site for?

This site is about developing good software. It is a site for developers; and good developers at that. Note: I say "developers" and not "programmers". Anyone can pick up a VB book and claim to be a programmer, but it takes a rare breed to be inspired by an idea, and develop that idea.

It's of course also for anyone interested in any of the software hosted here.