From:	jbdavis AT mit DOT edu (Jon Byron Davis)
Subject:	Re: Beta-19 and configurations....
11 Feb 1998 22:27:34 -0800 :
Message-ID:	<34E2086E.71019E43.cygnus.gnu-win32@mit.edu>
Reply-To:	fiat_owner AT yahoo DOT com
Mime-Version:	1.0
To:	gnuwin32 <gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com>

Somebody wrote: (my apologies to the author, I've lost the original)
[snip]
>I wish I understood why this is.  It would be nice to have an active
>community like Linux which had a core of helpful and knowledgable
>people willing to pitch in and fix things.  Alas, that does not seem to
>be the case here.

I tend to agree, and I'm willing to *try* to do my part.  

Here's the rub, though: I'm no programmer!  I'm a materials scientist!
So here's the deal:  I'll tell you guys my background and what I'm 
willing to learn, and y'all tell me how I can help.

I'll start by saying that I have NEVER worked with, but could learn
to work with make, lint, curses, etc.  My only programming experience
has been in solving analytical problems, not building applications.
Thus, all talk of header files, linking, .dll's and so on is lost on
me.  But I could learn if I were pointed in the right direction 
by someone more knowledgeable than myself.

I HAVE worked with the following [experience level in brackets]:
  1) Linux setup/administration  [basic level--no compiling]
  2) scripting under BASH        [I have had dreams in sed and awk]
  3) HTML and cgi junk           [how can you not understand HTML? ;]
  4) LaTeX                       [more than I'd like to admit]

So guys, tell me what I can do to get helpful?  I went bananas on
Amazon.com the other day and bought the O'Reilly books on Make, 
Porting UNIX Software, and Programming with GNU Tools.  I only got the
O'Reilly books yesterday, so I don't yet know what they offer (I 
generally trust O'Reilly unconditionally, though ;).

On a related note, I noticed that Geoffrey Noer has a page on Cygnus'
site concerning Things That Need To Be Done.  It doesn't look very 
complete right now (no offense to Geoffrey; I'm sure he already 
contributes an ENORMOUS amount of his professional and personal time!).
Might it be a good idea to maintain a definitive To Do List somewhere?
Hey!  Maybe that's what I can do!

Byron
-- 
Jon Byron Davis                                        617.629.4194
88 Concord Ave. #2                                  jbdavis AT mit DOT edu
Somerville, MA 02143                           fiat_owner AT yahoo DOT com

"We saw shadows of the morning light -- shadows of the evening sun"
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