You get better by doing... Most of the theory I learned in college has been fairly useless, it's the practical applications of the code that you truly learn from.
Take a 6 month long class in program design and learn very little... Take a 3 month intense application programming class and become a wiz, but like spellc* said, you never finish learning..
On that topic, I'm think we should organize a few of us that can code into an alternate beta-stage development team, one to work in tandem with the current developers, but at a different level. They can lay down the infrastructure, we can work on refining and bettering the current implementations. I'd like to see this happen for a couple of reasons
1. It takes pressure off the dev team to deliever fixed code on a release to release basis. They could concentrate on the infrastructural issues. Stablizing the network layer, expanding into new functionality. Also, we could work to fix the existing issues so they are freed up to implement bigger and better things, instead of chasing down bugs.
2. It allows an alternate way of recruiting new development folks into the pool. One of the downfalls of this project is the limited communication as to whats being done 'behind-the-scenes'. The outside dev group could be a more open channel, allowing people with suggestions/fixes to come in and lay them down without feeling a blow off. To be a fulltime developer requires a level of commitment that most of us don't have. To walk in and be able to integrate in something you fixed to a group designed for just that makes the development pool larger, and spreads the work out. Instead of 5 people each working on 20 ideas each, you could have 20 people working on 5 ideas each, making the gains faster, and with less of a commitment overhead. I don't have the time with my career and outside life to code 6 hours a day on it. But I have that much a week, as do alot of people most likely..
Downfalls to this approach.
1. As always, communication. If the groups don't adopt each others advancements, the code base splits and you end up with 2 completely seperate development teams. Then it would be a pissing contest.
If anyone's interested, I'd like to talk about the concept. There are alot of good coders that just don't have time to be FT developers, but have plenty of 'quick-hits' to offer. Im not suggesting that the eqemu fan base break off and run with the code, but I'd like to see an organization to the outside coding elements, and maybe open up the development cycle a bit, instead of it being a closed door 'Poof, a miracle occurs' process.
Let me know any ideas, I'd like to breathe some life back into the project...
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