Describing software in analogies

Jeff and Andy, dub5′s two developers, often joke that there’s really no way to describe how they’re writing the software for dub5 and what it does. Everything is explained to Clark and I — the business development guys — in analogies. Yesterday, Jeff and Andy pushed out a new version of the site, which you can look at and play around with here. It improves the navigation quite a bit from our previous site version, and it even previews a few new GUI features coming down the pipe — particularly the use of a traditional calendar view to navigate around your schedule.

Jeff did his best to describe the work he and Andy have been putting into the site — basically ensuring that the code we have is a solid foundation upon which we can continue to build:

“Since we all love analogies, what you see on the site now is a new foundation, new framing, and a new roof. The individual rooms themselves still need work, but that can be remedied with a bit of plaster and a new coat of paint. It will be much easier to add new rooms in the future. It’s as if Mike Holmes learned how to program. Wearing overalls.”

See, that I understand. But you start throwing out terms like “Ruby on Rails,” and “Cascading Style Sheets,” and suddenly you’ve lost me. So, we have the basics in place — a solid base from which to continue to build. We’re currently proceeding with developing the follow mission-critical things:

1. Implement month navigation on the sidebar (currently only an image placeholder)
2. Implement “nicknames” for contacts (no more User 17804353454 in your list)
3. Implement simple but complete group support

These are our three priorities right now. It’s not all we have on the go, but we view these as critical to enhancing the dub5 user experience .

Some of the other things we have on our radar:

1. A more robust “Edit Event” panel.
2. A less buggy day calendar that spans the full 24 period of a day.
3. A better looking “event information” page.

This stuff will come as the guys get the time to get it done.

Meanwhile, we’re continuing our push to integrate the system on campuses in Edmonton. We’re working closely with the U of A Students’ Union to get things moving — they’ve been really helpful in helping to guide our efforts. It should be an interesting 2009. Nay: it will be.

Remember, you can email me here if you have questions about dub5. If you want to, you can start using the system right now!