Are you still with me?

I’ve taken a long break from The Road for some time, but fear not, I haven’t forgotten about my initial goal. But since it’s been so long, maybe you have? Let’s start this step with a short recap:

• Step 0 – At the beginning of the summer 2009, I started my journey to “KDE Devland” to become a KDE developer. By sharing my experiences I hoped that I could motivate others to do the same, and leave behind useful tips for those who wanted to walk the same path. The first step was mostly an introduction.
• Step 1 – Before going on a journey, you should be prepared. In this step I shared useful links for soon-to-be developers and wrote about my plan and which books I would use.
• Step 2 – I started with C++. This post went through pointers, something I found hard to understand in the beginning.
• Step 3 – Talking about my temporary workspace and which applications I use to write the code.
• Step 4 – At this point I finally had some screenshots to show. In this step I showed my achievements after the summer and wrote a little bit about Qt programming.

I feel fairly comfortable with Qt now, and try to learn some specific parts of the toolkit when I find the time and motivation. Right now I’m struggling with the Interview framework – I think I understand the theory behind it, but I need to get a feeling for how to actually use it.

In this step I’ll show you some of my own applications I’ve done to familiarize myself with Qt. If you still remember the last step you’ll recognize some of them, however they’re actually all made from scratch. First one out is the smallest application, but also the one giving me the most trouble.

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The end of summer

Whew, long time no see! After the summer vacation I’ve had my hands full, so I never found the motivation to sit down and write this. Sorry about the delay.

This step marks the end of summer and will show you what I’ve achieved in these two months. But first something about Qt.

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Project Setup

This time I’ll just tell you about my project setup. You already know which books I read, but what other tools do I use to reach my goal?
First, however, I want to give attention to the following blog posts:

• thinkMoult –  The Road to KDE Devland (Moult Edition) #0
• veracity – The Road to KDE and Qt Development

It’s nice to hear about other people who walk towards the same goal, but not necessary the same road. Looking forward to hearing more from them, and I also hope to see more “The Road to …” series emerging.

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Can anyone give me some pointers?

After one week with Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days, it feels like I have the basics of C++ down: constants and variables, functions, some operators, loops, if and switch statements etc. Object oriented programming was introduced surprisingly early (Day 6), and the memory discussion at the end of Day 5 took some time to digest, but other than that everything went smoothly.

In the second week, the book takes up a topic that I’ve found pretty hard: pointers and references. In this step, I’ll write about some of the things about pointers and references that confused me. It’s assumed that you already know the basics of pointers/references.

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In case you’ve missed it, the series starts with step 0.

Preparations

When I became interested in KDE development some years ago, it wasn’t very easy to find out how to start. I found a KDevelop tutorial and learned a little about C++, but that’s pretty much it. Soon other things in life took over, and I returned to just watch KDE’s progress through the Dot and Planet KDE.

This summer, when I finally have a lot of free time, I want to start over. This means that “The Road to KDE Devland” series should suit you even if you don’t have any prior knowledge about C++ or programming in general.

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Introduction

Want to start to develop for KDE? Sure do. But how, and where do I start? Is it even possible for me to do something this complicated? The questions are many, but it’s not always easy to find the answers.

I’m just another person who wants to walk the path to “KDE Devland” – but I also want to leave something behind. Footsteps. Footsteps that other hikers can follow if they want, footsteps to show that anyone who’s motivated enough can walk this road.

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