[jsword-devel] I'd like to get started, but where ?

[Eric Galluzzo]

On Sat, 2004-10-16 at 13:14, Jana Lingo wrote:
> hello
> I am intirigued by the projevt and would like to lend a hand, but don't
> how to get started.

Jana,

I'm not really much of a contributor at all (I mostly just complain);
however, in the past, I think that Joe and DM have said basically, "Lend
a hand with whatever it is that interests you."  If you are interested
in the "business logic" that deals with reading books, bibles, etc., you
will want to look at the J-Sword component.  If you are interested in
the "rich client" application that actually displays a GUI for a user to
read the various Bibles and so forth, you will want to look at the Bible
Desktop component.

Whenever I have started at a company, the way that I have begun
development on that company's product is that someone assigns me some
fairly easy bugs to fix.  I then dive into the code, try to find
wherever it is that needs fixing, and end up learning some about the
codebase along the way.  So, if you wish to take this approach, you
might want to have a look at the J-Sword/Bible Desktop bug database at:

http://www.crosswire.org/bugs/secure/Dashboard.jspa

This might be a relatively easy bug to fix, and would probably introduce
you to quite a few areas of the code:

http://www.crosswire.org/bugs/browse/JS-9

Here is a page containing some developer documentation on J-Sword:

http://www.crosswire.org/jsword/devt.html

> I
> had planned on getting a little bit more up to speeed on all this before
> de-luring myself, but I lost my job on friday.

I'm sorry to hear that. :(

> This means i've got lot
> more time and lot les money to do this, but I still feel lead to do it.
> here's where I am so far:
> I have several Java book
> Head First Java http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hfjava/
> Learning Java  http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnjava2/
> Just Java2
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0131482114/jr_cd-20/104-3291829-9147917
> Ideas/ comments? i looking at a "course" on javaranch.com before
> yesterday, but now the $200 stick in my brain, Do you think it's worth
> it. 

To be honest, I wouldn't bother.  I think that when I got started with
Java, I bought one book and never ended up using it.  I'm sure I've got
some books somewhere or other, but once you've mastered the basics, most
of the information you need can be found in Java's comprehensive API
documentation.  In addition, there are excellent introductory materials
on the web -- for example, Sun's Java Tutorial.  Here is a page of
beginning documentation about Java:

http://java.sun.com/learning/new2java/index.html

Here is the full Java Tutorial book itself, in an online form:

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/

J-Sword and Bible Desktop both make heavy use of design patterns (see
the Design Patterns book by Erich Gamma et al.) and unit testing via
JUnit (http://www.junit.org/), so those are worth knowing about too. :)

Hope that helps!

    - Eric