[vox] C coders group

[Bill Broadley]

On 11/20/2012 11:17 AM, Bill Kendrick wrote:
> Hi Chris, there are definitely some C and C++ coders out here in LUGOD. (Hi!)
> We don't really have any sub-groups within the club.  (We talked about
> that a long, long time ago, and decided it wasn't worth the effort.)

In my general opinion the general LUG (linux user group) population has
been decreasing.  Lets face it Linux isn't new, isn't particularly hard
to use, and (if you are an admin) not particularly hard to admin.

As a result many "LUG" talks aren't particularly Linux specific.  They
tend to fall into three camps.  From past LUGOD talks:
1) do something cool with an app (Gimp, KDenlive, flight sim, and
   MythTV)
2) make your life easier as an web/systems admin (puppet, plone, git,
   django, Xen, etc)
3) make your life easier as a programmer (Pyramid, Appaserver, Lazarus,
   Revision control, AWS, Jruby, R, Alice, Cmake, etc)

Note that few (none?) of those is particularly Linux specific.

I've seen a few programming related efforts try to launch, none (sadly)
particularly successful.  As it turns out the percentage of linux
enthusiasts that write significant code on a daily basis isn't
particularly high.

In any case I think the best idea is to just throw what you are
interested in at the list.  If there's interest you/someone might give a
talk on it.  If not, interested parties can find a more appropriate
venue.  I would however recommend not being too specific.  C is a fine
language and I've written a substantial amount of code in it, but it's
not a common choice for me when I have a new project.  Besides unless
you are discussing the details of syntax there's few things specific to
C.  After all, even gcc doesn't mean C anymore.

So what would your ideal "c coders" talk be on?
* You giving a talk on a cool c code you wrote?
* A talk on general C skills like programming, testing, cool libraries,
  debugging, and profiling?
* Are you looking for someone to collaborate on a project with you?
* Some cool new algorithm/data structure/distributed system?

In general cool programming ideas are a dime a dozen, it's someone
willing to write the code that's the tough part.  IMO the most
interesting parts of programming are not overly specific to the language.

Personally I'd enjoy some mini sessions at Lugod.  Say 10 minutes
(enforced) for a short (some call it a bullet session) talk with 5
minutes for questions.  Have 4 in a single meeting so you can find
something interesting for a larger group of people.

Alas, people don't seem to like the idea 8-(.