Rastin Mehr

Last Friday, Wilco Jansen the Joomla!’s Development Coordinator announced a code freeze. That’s usually a good news. A code freeze means another Joomla! release is on the way, and this time perhaps we are looking at a stable release, or is it? let’s wait and see …

Yes we are excited. Joomla! CMS version 1.5 is finally mature enough to become the framework for many future web projects. Joomla! CMS 1.5 has been written from scratch based on a Model View Controller architecture and it is very modular. An ideal framework for building content management driven websites, Intranet solutions, and Social Networking websites.

Our friend Amy Stephen on OpenSourceCommunity.org has already started a party!

[tags]joomla, codefreeze, amy stephen, community, open source, cms, content management, web application development, framework[/tags]

We have already made the announcement here on the rmd Studio website. We are getting together on January 19th 2008 at the Network Hub to write documentation for the new Joomla! 1.5 content management system.

Please Announce your availability by registering here.

We would like to thank Minna and Robert at the Networkhub who have given us their beautiful work space including free Wi-Fi access.

[tags]joomla, joomla1.5, doccamp, joomlacamp, rmdstudio, vancouver, britishcolumbia, bc, canada[/tags]

Following the last week’s public bug squashing event that we did ( part 1 – part 2 ) with other 5 other major cities in the world, 100 commits were made and 88 bugs have been fixed by 52 of community members who have participated in the process.

Today we are proud to announce that Joomla! CMS version 1.5 Release Candidate 4 has been publicly released, and we are already looking forward to the next major release of our beloved content management system which will be the stable version.

Joomla! CMS 1.5 is the world’s best open source content management system and web application framework which has been rewritten from scratch based on a new Model View Controller (MVC) architecture and it is going to become the foundation for many next generation CMS based web applications, Intranets, and Social Media frameworks.

Joomla! CMS is especially well known for it’s intuitive and easy to use User Interface, and very modular software architecture.

[tags]joomla, open source, collaboration, cms, content management, rmdstudio, web application[/tags]

Alright! here is a piece of information that I think every product, marketing, or human resource manager may want to keep in mind:

Every Software Developer can program, but not every Programmer can develop software.

Does it makes sense? here is another example:

JK Rowling can read and write English, but not every college graduate can write the next best selling Harry Potter book even though they both know how to read and write English.

I can get all fancy and discuss all the technical details that set software developers apart from programmers, but I think I communicated my point. To become a software developer one has to spend months and years to program in different languages, and they also learn how to treat code as building blocks to build more elaborate structures know as computer software or applications.

In smaller teams, software developers often design, plan and program their ideas themselves. In larger teams they may focus on the design and planning and hand over the implementation to the Programmers, although programming is often a joyful experience so software developers usually create some programming time for themselves too. Why do you think so many professional developers devote their time to open source projects around the world? because it is fun and exciting!

Normally, software developers are pricier than programmers. If your project is a web or desktop application you may want to consider it a good investment, or else you may end up with a product that seems to be working ( if you are lucky ) but suffers from poor architecture, performance issues or a phenomenon called the “Spaghetti Code!” or the “Dog’s Breakfast!” which makes it very hard to maintain.

You wouldn’t serve that kind of cuisine to your end-users, would you?

Related Articles:

• What do computer programmers do?
• Tips on finding the right application developer
• What do web application architects do?

[tags]Software Developers, Programmers, hiring, staff, recruitment, skills, talents, project, project management, human resource, product development[/tags]

It is 4:00 PM and we have squashed one bug so far. A bit time consuming, but it was a high priority bug. Yes the darn thing was so big that we almost tripped over squashing it! There are still 28 people on the IRC. The event has been a success and so much fun so far.

In the far end you see Ash from (www.PeerGlobe.com) combing through the code. Ash is originally a Ruby on Rails developer, but recently has been interested in Joomla! CMS framework. Ash is a brilliant developer and so passionate about software architecture. He is also the man behind the ClassTalk Facebook Application. In fact that is were we met for the first time. Ash did this wonderful presentation at the Facebook Applications Developer’s Garage.

You can see me on the live stream here

That’s me on the top-left corner. On the bottom right you see Johan Janssens; he is the Joomla! CMS lead developer. The other folks in the picture are the team in the San Francisco California working with us.

People were so nice. They would drop by to say hello, the whole idea that Joomla! community members in 5 locations around the globe were collaborating to debug a top-notch content management system such as was so inspiring to them. We’ve had two Microsoft employees talking to us, and a freshman Computer Science student too.

Gwyn has been working with us for the last few hours. He had heard about the Vancouver Joomla! PBF event and decided to join us. Gwyn is an Economics student at SFU. His website is: www.GoodBoog.com

I am already getting a sugar high! Perhaps next time we will be going to a different venue just for a change. This one was really a warm up and the results in all 5 groups were quite impressive.

[tags]rastin mehr, rmdstudio, joomla, vancouver, pbf, public bug fixing, open source, collaboration, content management[/tags]