(Goofy) Mission Statement

Now that the application is complete, this blog is essentially finished. But, I would like to share my personal mission statement related to software development. I am not worried about getting mocked for this, since no one will read this blog anyway.

I don't know who first said it, but it has become my mantra: Software should benefit mankind, not bankrupt it. I don't make large software applications. In fact, this is just a hobby to keep my skills sharp. Regardless of what people may think, I have published my development strategy here in this blog. It is for the entire world to see for better or worse.

I would encourage all people to use their talents for the pursuit of the benefit of mankind. Part of that means helping those in need. Since my software that I develop is free, I would encourage people who use it to donate some of their time and/or money to their favorite charitable organization as an expression of gratitude for all the gifts they have received in their lives (if nothing else, my free software). If any of you do not have a favorite charity, here are a few of mine:

• Society of St. Vincent de Paul
• Catholic Relief Services
• The American Red Cross
• The Red Crescent
• The American Cancer Society
• Caridad de Porres
• Big Brothers Big Sisters
• Urban Promise
• America's Second Harvest
• Mother Teresa of Calcutta Center

Not to even see myself as an equal, but to paraphrase John Lennon (or brutally slaughter it): If I'm going to (put something out there for the rest of the world to see and use), it might as well be with the (message to benefit mankind) on it. You might not agree with this statement, and you don't need to use the software (or you do, it's yours to keep).

If you have any comments about the software, code or the (albeit minor) mission statement, please feel free to email me.

Lou Rosas

Final thoughts

This application was not for practical use. This application was for my own self interest. Unfortunately, that might mean a waste of bandwidth on this blog site, but if the readers don't like it, they don't have to read it. This was for me to chronicle an application (albeit simple) from inception to analysis design and implementation. Finally, for release. This code is registered under the GNU General Public License, so it is by default free. I have no intention of making any money on it. To be honest, I doubt anyone will download it anyway.

But, it was worth it from my point of view, since I have chronicled the steps I normally take when developing an application (at least a small one). This will be very valuable to me: since I can almost guarantee I will reference this site often in my development endeavors.

It looks like everything is complete

As stated earlier, I will post on this blog when the software and source code are uploaded to sourceforge.net.

As for this blog, it looks like the application is complete. It is four months overdue! What should have been done in a week (or even a day for that matter), took far too long. From a practical standpoint, this application should not have even been started--a simple spreadsheet can perform what this application does (and it probably performs it better).

I can't just upload jar files.

It appears I just can not upload jar files! So, I neither will be posting the code nor the executable jar file here. I have placed a request into sourceforge, so when that comes through, I will store the code there, put a link on this blog to both the source and executable. I doubt I will have many downloads, since this was a personal project that took way too long to complete.

Here is the Calculate Distance Window

Here is what the Calculate Distance Window looks like. It is extremely similar to the Calculate Run Time and Calculate Pace Windows. In the end, I should have just created on Generic Calculate Run Stuff class and instantiated three objects from it (or possibly inherited from it).

It is very aggravating when you find a better way of implementation when you are done. Well, that is what experience is for and it is part of "playing the game".

Use Case 5 is complete

Use case 5 was completed sometime ago. This was the use case related to saving run data to a file. It was a learning experience as was (as I predicted) the hardest of all the use cases to set up. But, it is now implemented and appears to be working fine. For this first release, I have no intentions of saving the data to a database. So, for now, the data is saved to a file, and the file is saved in ASCII format so the file can be opened by any typical text editor. I tried to get it to open with a spreadsheet and it does, but the headings at the top of the page are off and it does require the user to manually change the headings to fit on top of the columns where the data is. The data does show up in the correct columns and is columned just fine.

Lots to put in today

I have a lot to put into today. I have not kept up with the blog. Instead, most of my "blog" notes have been kept by hand by my computer. There is a lot to write and I need to get started on it today. Not only will I chronicle the success of the application development, but will put down what I have (re)discovered in making this an executable--since this was written in Java.

The point is, the application is complete. It has been tested (by me). I have requested space on sourceforge.net.