About a year ago I met seraph in #geoshell, and we decided to start work on a file transfer application for linux. It went through various stages of design and ended up being called Transference and being a file transfer application written in C# on mono. This post is about why my role in Transference has more or less died. It's quite difficult to explain, but I will try my best.

When we initially decided that starting to develop Transference would be a good idea, I was feeling very motivated to get involved in open source projects. I had been working on GeoShell as a core developer for a few months and was feeling psyched. Things were going good. But as usually happens, real life became more hectic. My work load picked up and I was trying to fit in work and family and development and diving etc. It came down to prioritising.

Obviously family came first, then work, diving and finally spare time for other projects. Being involved in GeoShell meant that the majority of my development time was spent fixing GeoShell bugs as I couldn't just stop coding for GeoShell, I was already committed there. So Transference took a bit of a back seat. I did however spend some time and thrashed out a design document, which I hope gave at least a small amount of guidance to the dev team.

Now when I talk about spare time, I need to explain that even though I had some spare time for myself, the amount was minimal. My girlfriend lived about 30 minutes from me and I would generally go from work to her place, spend the evening there and then get home at about 22h30. From there I would try and spend about an hour doing some coding before going to be to get up for gym the next morning at about 05h30. From Gym to work and so the cycle continued. Weekends would generally be spent at the girlfriend’s parents, where I had no access to a computer.

At this point I still had a reasonable machine at my disposal (at my parents house) but in May last year, I moved out and got my own flat, and took a silly computer with me (a P1 333 with 64MB RAM). That is what I still have. Oh and no Internet, not even a phone line. :-p So I can't run any .net stuff, and I can't run the latest Fedora or Gnome or anything. So basically that counted out any development at home.

Initially I had a spare machine at work, on which I installed Linux and did some basic coding for Transference. But as work got more hectic, so the problems with me trying to switch between Linux and Windows during my spare moments at work increased. And as the year progressed, so these moments became fewer. Plus I was still trying to fix GeoShell bugs at the same time.

While all this was happening, lots of other things were catching my attention. Applications like Phatbits and Kapsules caught my eye and I had some fun playing with them. I also fiddled around a bit with some code, for kicks, and to test some new technology and ideas.

And well, that is basically it. I got engaged at the end of last year, so now I am spending a lot of time planning my Wedding and just general every day life.

I suppose that all of this is for nothing if I didn't learn something from it. And I think I have. While I think that design in software is important, I also think that very often when it comes to a spare time project, design is overrated. Generally when you begin with an spare time project, you begin it because you have some spare time and are excited about the idea. If you over think or over design it, you not only run out of time, but I feel that you just get bored.

I mean, I do design and documentation at work all day. The last thing I feel like doing in my spare time is a huge amount of documentation. I do coding projects in my spare time because they are fun. Not just because I know how to code. I also think that a spare time project needs to be started with a really small core group of developers. 1 or 2 at most. Once again it comes down to not wanting to spend my spare time trying to coordinate a whole lot of developers. I want to code and enjoy it. I don't want to stress about other developers who also have limited spare time. I don't want to write a ton of documentation. I also don't want to spend my time stressing because I don't have a Linux machine and I am unable to get my coding done.

While I definitely think that the Transference project is a good idea, I don't think it is right for me at this point in my life. Too much is against me getting things done and having fun. I really hope that the developers who are still active on the project have a good time, and I wish them all well. Perhaps I will be able to contribute again at a later stage.

Until then, good luck guys!