A New Project

This week I started a new software project. I'm not sure it will make me much money but it is good to be coding again. It is a short project and so I am hoping to have it completed within a week.

The exciting thing about my new endeavor is that it involves doing something I have not yet done. Normally my software projects are made up of pieces of things I have already put into other programs. If it needs to save data, I have an example of code I used on my previous project. Do I need to validate any of that data? If so, then I have a piece of code I used two projects ago. Sometimes software development is just like putting together pieces of Legos. It can also be just as fun.

The new piece that I am working on is a relatively new feature found in web-based applications. This means that I have to go the original RFC and figure out how to implement the feature on my own. Now you may be asking yourself, "What the heck is an RFC?" RFC is an acronym that stands for "Request For Comments."

When the Internet was in its infancy, the technologists involved exercised a bit of humility and democracy. Instead of coming up with a list of "must do's" they decided they would use a community process to determine the best way to implement technological features. Someone working on a problem would throw out a "Request For Comments" with his or her solution to the problem. Others working on the Internet were then free to suggest alternative methods. If nobody had any meaningful comments, then the RFC was adopted as a defacto specification.

One thing about computers and technology is that they continue to evolve. Even someone such as myself, with almost a quarter of a century working with computers, needs to learn new things. Now if I can just figure out how to do this one little thing, my project will be close to finished.