BeachProjects

At ThoughtWorks occasionally a developer will not be assigned to a project, and is hence 'on the beach'. So far, I've been 'on the beach' all of three days. When I was on the beach, I read some of the Spring 2.0 manual and created a COBOL copybook to Java code generator. I'm always thinking of projects that would require at least a day, which I hope to work on next time I'm 'on the beach'.

• Schedule Optimizer - It's a fairly frequent problem where you have a group of people who want to attend a number of course. When you attend a conference, you generally have several different tracks, and have to choose which ones you want to attend. The software app would take everyones preferences and then attempt to find an optimal schedule. The data input could be a Ruby on Rails app, putting the data in a MySql database. Then, a Java app could search for an optimal solution. It could use grid computing with Monte Carlo simulations, or use genetic algorithms.
• Volunteer for Kiva.org
• Create my 43Places J2ME App mobile check-in app.
• Create a VoiceXML app.
• FixStyle project - like CheckStyle, but it fixes the things CheckStyle complains about.
  • Seems that Uncrustify may already do this.
• Streams library for Java. Create utility classes like 'tr', 'sed,' and 'awk' which operator on streams.
• FreeTDS like database driver for Ruby, written in pure Ruby.
• OpenId module for Gallery2
• Create an ANTLR language target for D.

Completed

• Simian replacement. Create a similarity analyser that works at a syntax level. For example, just renaming your variables doesn't make a method different.
  • I've worked with Do Kien to his his same project to work as part of an automated build. The result is an Google hosted open source project at http://code.google.com/p/same-code-duplication-detector/.