David Giordano & Marcos Begerez
Genoma Project
Why did you come up with this idea?
The idea for the project had been around for some time and in the last few months the necessary synergy to carry it out was generated: ideas, discussions, people, technology and lots of communication.
Right now, the group is made up by two developers: Marcos Begerez as collaborator and me (the mentor of Genoma).
At present, the Genoma project is limited to providing a basic infrastructure and a set of practical extensions.
Even though we have started to work on the implementation of this project, there's still a lot to do to meet the project objectives. If everything goes as planned, in a few months we will move from a theoretical project to present practical and actual examples.
What motivated you to participate in the second edition of Collaborative Projects 2.0?
Mainly the possibility to collaborate, do research, experiment and implement some ideas that could be useful for the GeneXus community as a whole.
Genoma will be open source, and its entire knowledge will be shared and delivered for the Community's benefit.
The main objective of Genoma will be to provide GeneXus programmers with tools that will enable them to create their own extensions (programming them in the GeneXus language itself). Then, these extensions will add value to the entire Community, as they are implemented, published or distributed either in a public or private manner.
Those who develop tools and extensions will also benefit because they will be able to take advantage of the path created, by extending Genoma or building new tools based on the developed infrastructure. The important thing is to provide value, as experience or as a tool, making all knowledge public and free for the entire Community.
This can be equaled to planting a seed in productive ground and leaving the Community the task of caring for it and making it grow, which will provide the project with permanence and feedback.
What are the challenges to overcome in your project?
On a personal level, the main challenge is to be efficient and effective in spite of the limited time I have available for it. Meeting the commitment required by a project of this size is a very complicated task.
Another challenge in the technology field is to be able to learn about several topics in a very short time. In this project we will not only have the opportunity to implement Extensions, but we will also be able to create External Objects and User Controls, while learning a lot about technologies related to these topics (such as Silverlight, JavaScript, .Net 3.5).
Due to this wide range of challenges, we're willing to accept any kind of collaboration, ideas, programming, source code of extensions, manuals, tutorials or anything that would help us learn about so many topics in a short time. And, of course, if anyone would like to join the main development group, he/she is welcome.
What are your expectations in relation to CP 2.0?
In the short term, our expectations are related mainly to the "experience" of taking on this type of project.
It will require a lot of collaboration; not only within the team but also spreading to all programming levels in the Community. We hope that as we start to build and demonstrate its usefulness, others will join us to develop new extensions and features.
In the long term, we'd like that all Community members collaborate and benefit not only from the tool, but also from all the extensions that the Community itself will be able to implement on the infrastructure that we are planning to create.