EveryGUI

I've been developing open source applications since 2001, for both Windows and Unix-like operating systems. Computer programming is my passion, in which I'd like to turn into a career, without ruining the love for it.

I used to be an artist (of many kinds), have been for most of my life. In fact, computer graphics is what turned me on to computers in the first place. I later became a computer geek, Linux geek, and finally a programmer (the geek of geeks).

Outside of computer programming, I like to spend time with my wife, play video games, and going skateboarding. I am also trying to develop my own indie video game in my spare time, which involves writing, drawing, graphics, 3d modelling, and of course programming. Sometimes I also develop modifications and design levels for the hit game Unreal Tournament 2004.

Here is a list of some of the open source projects I have developed. They are all licensed under the GNU GPL, with the exception of Unreal mods, which are under the LGPL.

UMark and UMark Online
http://unrealmark.net
Project Description: Software which benchmarks your computer with the popular video game, Unreal® Tournament 2004. UMark is available on Windows® and also on Linux. This software is also partnered with an online database, UMark Online, in which users may submit and compare benchmark results.

gUnrealTools
http://gunrealtools.sf.net
Project Description: GUTS is a single program which provides the following GUI (GTK+) tools for Unreal® Tournament 2004 in Linux: a cache manager, a umod unpacker, a uz2 compressor/decompressor, and a dedicated server launcher.

Unreal Mods
http://damnclan.com/evil
Project Description: A web page containing a collection of my various works that add content and new playability to the popular video game Unreal® Tournament 2004.

Web C Plus Plus
http://webcpp.sf.net
Project Description: A cross-platform utility software which converts programming source code into highlighted HTML code. This program supports over 30 programming languages and runs on Windows® and many UNIX variants, including Linux.

CgiBlast
http://freshmeat.net/projects/cgiblast
Project Description: CgiBlast is a CGI interface to NCBI's Basic Local Alignment Search Tool, giving widespread access to the genetics search tool.

Over the years I've learned many languages and toolkits. I've previously used C++ (mainly), C, perl, php and Unix shell for production work, and used countless other languages including python for trivial purposes.

It wasn't until just recently before I started on EveryGUI that I discovered how simple and time efficient programming in python was. I've always came accross pygtk examples when looking up GTK+ documentation for the C language while porting (mostly rewriting) C++/MFC applications to Linux, and I always thought it looked a hell of a lot easier.

Shortly after releasing gUnrealTools, my fourth GTK+ application, I really felt a need for change as I was not productive enough with GTK+ in C as my past projects would take me weeks or months to get things done. I tried GTK# (C# bindings) for a little bit, but the simplest examples weren't working and I lost patience for it. Then I remembered how simple all those pygtk examples looked.

After finding proper examples, tutorials, documentation, and a libglade wrapper (by Padraig Brady), I started on my first pygtk-libglade project: to port WebcppUI to Linux. Although the project was a complete rewrite (originally written in C++/MFC), it only took me under 3 days to develop a fully working version (and it took me about 30 minutes to port back to Windows). Shortly after, it took me another couple of days to complete a second small pygtk project. By then, I only had a week or so experience with pygtk before I started work on EveryGUI, which was a much larger project than the first two. I ended up with a working version in under 2 weeks, part time.

And although I haven't really mentioned the technical details of why python is more productive, I think this story speaks for itself.