
The Ubuntu App Showdown - iProject
http://developer.ubuntu.com/showdown/
======
freehunter
They talk about Rapid Application Development, and it makes me sad. It makes
me sad because I still haven't found a RAD tool that works on the same level
of Visual Basic.

Forgetting all the things Visual Basic did wrong, the biggest thing it did
right was the UI builder. When you put a button on the screen, it wrote the
code for you. When you put a text box on the screen, it wrote the code for
you. When you double click the button in the designer, it takes you to the
code for that button. You select "onClick" and type "textbox1 = "Hello
world!". Save and run, click the button, and the textbox says "Hello world!".

VB made UI _easy_. Glade is nice, but it still doesn't come close to the ease
of use that VB brought to the market. I don't know of anything else that has
since. VB was a ecosystem that let accountants build software. With all the
bad that comes with the good, this is still unmatched as far as my research
has shown me.

~~~
truncate
There is Lazarus I stumbled upon once. Tried it a little and seems to do
things quite much like VB. Its basically a Delphi clone I guess. But damnit,
who wants to use Pascal!

BTW how about Mono? Isn't that supposed to be .NET clone?

~~~
freehunter
Mono recreates the code of Visual Basic, but doesn't have the VB UI builder
(last time I tried it was in mid-2011, might have changed).

------
keithpeter
Anyone doing a single column outliner with export to html/text and
libreoffice? Like Acta for Ubuntu?

Seriously, what Ubuntu Software Centre needs is a 'wanted app' system of some
kind. Perhaps people say how much they would pay as well. Could be fun.

~~~
keithpeter
<http://www.reddit.com/r/ubuntuappshowdown/>

Turns out there is a place to post suggestions

------
jiggy2011
Interesting that they talk about "Ubuntu" apps rather than Linux apps. I
wonder if this is just a marketing thing or if they are going to try and get
"exclusive" apps that are not available on other distros?

~~~
mtgx
They wouldn't have much to gain from fighting against other Linux distros. It
would be like fighting over breadcrumbs in the consumer market. It would be
pointless. Their real competitor is Windows, and they should be using
marketing and partnerships with manufacturers (Dell and others) and big app
developers (EA, Valve, etc) and whatever is necessary to push Ubuntu/Linux
more into the mainstream.

If this is indeed their plan, though, there is a pretty big flaw in it. Why
are they trying so much to get "inspired" by Mac OS, when they should be
trying to get inspired by Windows, and make it easy for the many more Windows
users to transition easily from Windows to Ubuntu? As a Windows user, this is
why I find Linux Mint Cinnamon (also based on Ubuntu) so much easier and less
frustrating to use than regular Ubuntu. Of course Windows 8 is completely
changing the direction for their UI/UX from the "old Windows" style, too, so
there's that, but I have no reason to believe it will be successful, yet.

~~~
jiggy2011
Many Linux distros (Mandrake especially) spent years trying to win market
share by cloning Windows and didn't get very far.

Turns out _cheap looking Windows clone that can't run most Windows apps_ isn't
really what the market is looking for.

Of course they are inspired by what Apple is doing (so is pretty much everyone
now, including MS) but I think Unity/Gnome3 are different enough to stand on
their own merits (or lack thereof).

I'm not sure what Canonical would get out of a partnership with Dell though ,
since their software is free they aren't going to get a cut on units sold.

~~~
desipenguin
"I'm not sure what Canonical would get out of a partnership with Dell though,
since their software is free they aren't going to get a cut on units sold."

Canonical charges 20% transaction fee for each app sold
[http://developer.ubuntu.com/publish/commercial-software-
faqs...](http://developer.ubuntu.com/publish/commercial-software-faqs/)

------
mnazim
My friend(<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=owaislone>) is doing a clone of
Fluid App(<http://fluidapp.com/>). He made very good progress in past week and
is currently working on proper desktop integration (notify-osd, unity
integration, app indicator support) and userscripts support. I am really
looking forward to it.

~~~
owaislone
Reddit link
[http://www.reddit.com/r/ubuntuappshowdown/comments/vggkn/app...](http://www.reddit.com/r/ubuntuappshowdown/comments/vggkn/app_submission_fogger_turn_cloud_apps_into_ubuntu/)

------
BHSPitMonkey
I'm a little concerned about this.

* It presents the idea of adding several dozen new rapidly-created "apps" to Ubuntu as a necessarily good thing. We don't need "more apps", we need better solutions, which IMO often means fewer apps.

* From the rules: "The application must contain exclusively original code and the Participant must be the original author of the content." This effectively limits library use to only what's in the default repositories, right? I suppose we're not allowed to use things along the lines of the Dropbox SDK?

------
factorialboy
Here's my submission:

HumanTask is a personal task manager for humans -
[http://srirangan.net/2012-06-humantask-is-a-personal-task-
ma...](http://srirangan.net/2012-06-humantask-is-a-personal-task-manager-for-
humans)

~~~
keithpeter
I'll have a play when you release it on the USC

~~~
factorialboy
Here it is: [http://srirangan.net/2012-07-humantask-preview-release-
get-i...](http://srirangan.net/2012-07-humantask-preview-release-get-it-now)

------
user49598
What are the judging criterion for the contest and who judges?

~~~
adambyrtek
If you read the post you will see the list of judges and criteria.

~~~
user49598
Haha wow, I'm an idiot. I went straight for the large orange circles and
passed off the intro paragraph completely.

------
illumen
All the people on the review panel are men. Could be better.

~~~
nuaccnt
Probably not. (Except as an unusual coincidence.)

Picture from a python conference:

<http://www.efytimes.com/admin/useradmin/photo/Pycon-UK.jpg>

As in all the other pictures that appears from a google search it's >90% men.
It's perfectly understandable that review panels will have >90% men on
average, if they select for (presumably equally distributed among programmers)
qualifications, passion and interest.

~~~
illumen
More than 50% of app purchasers are women, so there's definitely plenty of
women who would be interested in doing this.

~~~
nuaccnt
If you want the average consumer to weigh in, fine. Look at download/purchase
statistics, canvass users or do focus groups. If you want qualified,
passionate and experienced programmers you're out of luck, those are mostly
men. An overrepresentation (compared to the total number of candidates that
would be good enough, of course some of them are women) it is bound to cost
you something. Is having 50% (or whatever) women in open source related
activity more important to you than having the best possible open source
software?

~~~
illumen
More diversity in things like this does improve software. I learnt this at one
of the fastest growing software companies in the world.

Do men know best what women want? No. Get women involved, and there is a
better result.

If we don't begin to be inclusive, then Ubuntu will stay a closed mens club -
and we will all be poorer for it.

~~~
nuaccnt
I'd say what for-profit companies do is the best indicator we have of the
value of gender balance vs. just-making-something-people-want [to
buy]--there's an imbalance in those too. Apple, for example, has an all male
executive team. Microsoft has one woman (hr). Google has a few women (pr,
hr/lobbying and marketing).

<http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/>

<http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/>

<http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/exec/slt.aspx>

[http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/programming-and-
development...](http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/programming-and-
development/it-gender-gap-where-are-the-female-programmers/2386)

I expect an objection that assumes for-profit businesses don't act rationally
to maximize profit, I won't pursue that.

~~~
EliRivers
"I expect an objection that assumes for-profit businesses don't act rationally
to maximize profit, I won't pursue that."

Why not? Sounds like a valid objection that undermines your entire argument.

~~~
nuaccnt
It would be, if it was provably or probably true. I don't think it is. But I
wasn't (and I'm not) going to spend an hour arguing the point.

Further reading:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_order>

~~~
EliRivers
Well I do think it is, and I've provided as much argument as you, so I suppose
we'll just have to accept that we'll never know.

