X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to geda-help-bounces using -f X-Recipient: geda-help AT delorie DOT com Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:07:45 -0800 From: Andrew Poelstra To: geda-help AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: [geda-help] Help, how can I help? Message-ID: <20120121080745.GA8362@malakian.lan> References: <4F1A1196 DOT 20100 AT gmail DOT com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4F1A1196.20100@gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-12-10) Reply-To: geda-help AT delorie DOT com Errors-To: nobody AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: geda-help AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 08:15:02PM -0500, Darryl Gibson wrote: > > My question to this group is, what programming language would be most > beneficial for me to learn, to help with gEDA? > C, certainly. It is a very small language (though we use some libraries, particularly GLib, which are very big), and generally follows the principle of least surprise -- though it does so by forcing the programmer to specify everything! > I asked a similar question on #ubuntu, and the answers favored Python, > but I know that won't be of much use here, so... > > And I suppose I should learn a scripting language too? I would like to > learn a scripting language that complements a programming language, if > such a pair exists? > There are murmurs about Python every so often, but at the moment we don't use it. As DJ mentioned, a lot of code is done in guile, a variant of scheme. However, I have made some fairly large contributions to pcb, without ever learning or working with guile. So IMHO, it's not necessary when starting out. > > I'm comfortable compiling from source, but I'm not familiar with Git. > > I think I should learn Git, so I can stay current with developments? > Well, certainly learn the basics (the 'clone', 'pull', 'branch', 'commit' and 'diff' commands). But there is no need to become an expert. This project doesn't use any of the crazy features of git you see, for example, maintaining the Linux kernel heirarchy. A good introduction is here: http://progit.org/book/ -- Andrew Poelstra Email: asp11 at sfu.ca OR apoelstra at wpsoftware.net Web: http://www.wpsoftware.net/andrew "I don't understand. Are you saying dualism is always good, or always bad?"