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24-hour app #1: Die Schere, a video editor

I have long known that ap­pli­ca­tion de­vel­op­ment is an ar­du­ous process. I have al­so long sus­pect­ed one of the rea­sons it's ar­du­ous is the de­vel­op­er. I should be more speci­fic, I am one of the rea­son­s.

That's be­cause I don't know what I am do­ing, and I don't mean that in the "I am a lame pro­gram­mer" sense (even if that's al­so true some­what), but in the sense that I lit­er­al­ly don't know what the app should look like, or what its fea­ture set should be.

So, I have de­cid­ed to em­bark on a se­ries of ex­per­i­ments I will call 24-hour app­s.

Here are the rules:

  • I shall cre­ate a neat ap­­pli­­ca­­tion, sta­ble, use­­ful, us­able and de­­cen­t-look­ing.

  • I shall do it in no more than 24 hours. Af­ter that time, it should be at least good enough for a pre­view re­lease, if not a be­­ta.

  • Those 24 hours can be split in two or three ses­­sions

  • Time spent do­ing icon­s, doc­s, etc, counts.

  • All de­vel­op­­ment shall be pub­­lic (I am us­ing github)

  • I must have a use for the re­­sult­ing ap­­pli­­ca­­tion, and it should be at least an ad­e­quate so­lu­­tion for that prob­lem.

So, what's the first pro­jec­t? I call it Die Schere (The Scis­sors in ger­man) and it's a video ed­i­tor.

It's not a kden­live re­place­men­t, it's just the video ed­i­tor I wish I had when I need­ed to glue a piece of one video with a piece of an­oth­er.

In the old, pre-dig­i­tal world, that was done us­ing a cut­ter and scotch tape. I want Die Schere to be as use­ful and com­pre­hen­si­ble as that was, but use­ful for clum­sy peo­ple like my­self.

Here is a video af­ter to­day's ses­sion, which last­ed 8 hours:

The ba­sic func­tions are there, even if lots of work is still need­ed.

  • You can load clips to work with them

  • You can cut clips (like us­ing a cut­ter!)

  • You can choose the cut points in­­ter­ac­­tive­­ly or by ed­it­ing a time

  • You can ar­range them (like us­ing scotch tape!)

  • You can gen­er­ate the out­­put video

As a back­end it's us­ing men­coder, but there's no rea­son it should­n't work with ffm­peg or melt if some­one writes 20 lines of code.

Daniel Albuschat / 2009-10-25 15:22:

Heya,
that's *exactly* what I was doing with a tiny program called Shrinky, because I came to the exact same conclusion - only applications of very minimal functionality and little work will ever get finished. And I came to hate unfinished projects, after the... gazillionths one I started ;-)
Here's my story on Shrinky:
http://daniel-albuschat.blo...
The main program itself is quite finished, polished and stable, but I haven't finished the installer, since this is actually more work than the program itself. ;(

Daniel Albuschat / 2009-10-25 15:22:

Heya,
that's *exactly* what I was doing with a tiny program called Shrinky, because I came to the exact same conclusion - only applications of very minimal functionality and little work will ever get finished. And I came to hate unfinished projects, after the... gazillionths one I started ;-)
Here's my story on Shrinky:
http://daniel-albuschat.blo...
The main program itself is quite finished, polished and stable, but I haven't finished the installer, since this is actually more work than the program itself. ;(

IdeasMan / 2009-10-28 01:50:

Why don't you record the whole coding session so that people can watch it and learn from it? That to most programmers is far more interesting than watching the end result.

:-)

IdeasMan / 2009-10-28 01:50:

Why don't you record the whole coding session so that people can watch it and learn from it? That to most programmers is far more interesting than watching the end result.

:-)

Roberto Alsina / 2009-10-28 02:11:

Well, you can see every commit at github :-)

Roberto Alsina / 2009-10-28 02:11:

Well, you can see every commit at github :-)

Barthus / 2009-11-01 01:09:

I'm learning python and pyqt myself, and your blog and ideias are very insightful for begginners like me! I would like to specially thank you for your series of tutorials "PyQt by Example"! Before that, I was absolutely lost!

Barthus / 2009-11-01 01:09:

I'm learning python and pyqt myself, and your blog and ideias are very insightful for begginners like me! I would like to specially thank you for your series of tutorials "PyQt by Example"! Before that, I was absolutely lost!

Roberto Alsina / 2009-11-01 03:33:

@barthus thanks for your kind words, I really need to find a free day to work on those tutorials :-(

Roberto Alsina / 2009-11-01 03:33:

@barthus thanks for your kind words, I really need to find a free day to work on those tutorials :-(


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