Question

So I have this idea for an amazing C program, but I've never seriously been through the traditional, professional development process (liaising with developers/users; sharing source on git, mercurial, svn, sourceforge; standards & portability; licensing; documentation; bug tracking; packaging & distribution etc.)

How do I get started? I haven't coded the program yet, but I expect it to be usable within a week.

Answer 1

I hope that it will be super portable as well, able to function on every windows, unix, os ten, playstation: anything that implements a C standard library :-D

Answer 2

also, what's the best way to go about designing a program, laying out it's specifications and then coding it up from those specifications?

Answer 3

You can start a development process in many different ways, but if you would like to start in a profissional way, you can read more about ALM (Application Lifecycle Management).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_lifecycle_management

Answer 4

So, the best word of advice that I can give you is not to over-think things. Start simple, work up into complexity. There's can be a lot involved with Application Lifecycle Management or very little at all. :)

Out of the list of topics you'd listed, I'd recommend making version control a priority.

Answer 5

Version control is a valuable skill that was seeded in application management and has grown into many aspects of my digital life. It has revolutionized the way I think about information and how information should be shared and delegated with others. I would suggest learning about it for the sake of knowing it.

Answer 6

I just build programs with no formal plan. I call it creativity by simplicity.....I might not crank out programs in 3-4 days usually I build a program with 1 6000+ line class in 30 days and occasionally 2 months the longest I ever spent on a program was 3 months. This takes into account that you have allot of classes already built to work with. I spent around 5 years building and compiling code snippets and classes so I can rapidly develop applications in multiple languages. So if you think you are going to build a complex program in a week you are so wrong :) good luck to you.

--calmchess

Answer 7

speaking of version control SVN servers are good thing to use.....saved me more than once.

Answer 8

http://www.indiangeek.net/wp-content/uploads/Programmer%20competency%20matrix.htm

I hope I will be a O(log(N)) guy someday :(

This C project will be my first step up that route! :) time to learn what version control is...