SamAuciello.com

So I was working on a project in Ruby with my friend Isaac when I noticed that his terminal looked really cool. I asked him about it and he said it was zsh with a plugin called zsh-syntax-highlighting. I found the project’s github page and tried setting it up but it didn’t immediately work. Continue reading →

This semester, in an attempt further my education in the art of making great software, I began looking at how software is made in the open source world. I chose to look at this field for several reasons. I’ve been quite interested in open source software as long as I’ve known about it. I appreciate the social/economic benefits of software that is made by individuals who want it to be of quality as opposed to corporations that simply want to make money (and are therefore frequently motivated to compromise quality for business reasons e.g. planned obsolescence etc.). My experience with academic vs. professional programming also leads me to believe that people are far more likely to cut corners when they’re getting paid. Another reason for looking into open source was that large-scale software is often made in teams. I had had very little experience working on software with a group and, being at tiny isolated liberal arts school with a similarly tiny computer science department, I realized that this was a key missing component of my education. This would also give me an opportunity to compare my coding to others’ so as to get a sense of how I need to improve. Continue reading →