project_questionnaire.md

What's the name (or codename) of your app? What will your app do?

I'm not sure that I want to work on a single app. Current project ideas include:

Kitten of the day! - an app which takes email addresses and sends the compiled list a photo of a kitten every morning.

Background processing - evaluating a collection of data to see if it meets requirements, and recording which combinations meet requirements. A little background: last quarter Cheri and I worked on Slacker Meals, which generated a meal from a database of ingredients. Meals needed to be within certain ranges for protein, calcium, and calories. The naive method we used to generate meals randomly tried ingredients until it found a match. This usually took around a hundred tries. Instead, I would like to take a database, generate possible combinations, and evaluate the combos based on requirements.

When the database changes new combinations which include new ingredients should be evaluated... If the requirements change, the entire db needs to be re-evaluated. Also, the number of combinations increases exponentially next to the db, which makes my brain hurt.

Open Source contributions to Rails and Resque - I will be remote pairing with Steve Klabnik later this week to improve Resque and Rails. I think that we might do this several times, and making open source contributions to these projects could be a nice component of my coursework this quarter.

A collection of small, single-purpose apps which work in concert with one another: Something like what Chris White is describing in Multi-Server Architecture.

A sinatra app living in a Rails app - I know that you can build multiple apps into the same project and I'm interested in figuring out the specifics of how this works.

API stuff - looking at creating an app that is entirely an API, would probably just respond with JSON at appropriate end points.

The Gizmo - A few months ago I contacted the Emma Goldman Finishing School about an application called The Gizmo which was mentioned as an open source project in "Anarchy is Boring". The Gizmo is a chore-and-resource-division application written in Java. Earlier this week they put the code of The Gizmo on github. I want to translate/port the code from Java to Ruby, then build a Rails app with it.

Who's on your team? What are their roles?

I'm flying solo this quarter, though I'd be glad to help other folks with their projects, I want to do a deep dive this quarter.

I have a lot of ideas, and I think the projects that should get the bulk of my time include implementing background processing on Slacker Meals, doing OS work on Rails and Resque, and porting the Gizmo to Ruby and writing a Rails implementation of it.

Why do you want build this app?

I want to figure out how to process data in the background and do more Open Source contributions. I think that translating code from Java (a language I don't know) to Ruby is an interesting challenge.

What specifically will users do? What are their roles?

None of these projects are focused on a user of an app.

Is this a new or existing app? How much already exists?

Existing

How will you get your data?

All data will be handcrafted, farm-raised, no antibiotics, curated, artisinal data.

How are you tracking bugs, features, chores, and milestones? Are you happy with your tracker?

I'll use Github's issue tracker on a per project basis, or Trello if Github doesn't make sense. I'm never happy with tracking software, it never remembers the thing I forgot to put in it.

What's the GitHub url? Is there a live url?

• Slacker Meals (aka, Put It In Your Face)
• More links forthcoming

What parts of the Rails stack are still confusing your team?

I'm fairly comfortable with the stack, db to views. Not super savvy with JavaScript, and I still get confused (almost daily) but I'm familiar with the tech.

How much of the planned curriculum do you think is applicable to your project?

Directly: 20-30% Indirectly: Damn near all of it.