The reason for this is my view on OOP (Object Oriented Programming). Since I am not working on super large projects running mission critical systems I believe one should first get the code working and worry about OOP later. Not that one should not keep OOP in mind while programming but rather not worry about OO so much and concentrate on getting code that actually works. Especially if you are working on something that is new and you have not done before. Please also do not confuse design with OOP. Yes there is something like OO design but there is also something like designing how your program will work. So what does this have to do with Mixip.

Everything.  I have now got it to work.  I can add the extra functionality that is missing without much trouble.  What I am doing now is to get the code and functionality organized and have started to think in a OO way.  A good example is that instead of sending the number and password to the main module one now sends an Account object that contains all the necessary and more information for a login.  The account object can easily be written and read to and from a file with a method.  Some other developer can easily extend the Account module to write and read to and from a Sqlite DB …

Most other developers will probably disagree with my view and they will most likely be correct. But hey it is working for me and that is all that counts.

On a related note I was thinking to set a deadline for releasing version 0.4 (0.1 looks so untrustworthy so we are starting at 0.4).  So here it is the deadline is 1 June 2009.  What ever happens 0.4 will go out, the documentation will be up to date and I will find a volunteer(s) to create a Ubuntu,Fedora… packages.

Now if only updating documentation was as fun as programming

PS. The Makefile.pl was update and should work fine now.  See the INSTALL file for more info.  Also still looking for someone to test on Windows please contact me.

One small thing I ran into was the way that the Captcha image was sent. According to the protocol reference the captcha image is encoded in base 64 but I just could not decode the image correctly using MIME::Base64.

Turns out there is a difference between decoding base 64 for normal applications and HTTP applications. According to Wikipedia:

Using a URL-encoder on standard Base64, however, is inconvenient as it will translate the ‘+’ and ‘/’ characters into special percent-encoded hexadecimal sequences (’+’ = ‘%2B’ and ‘/’ = ‘%2F’). When this is later used with database storage or across heterogeneous systems, they will themselves choke on the ‘%’ character generated by URL-encoders (because the ‘%’ character is also used in ANSI SQL as a wildcard).

After some more Googling I found MIME::Base64::URLSafe by Kazuho Oku and could decoded the image correctly :

MIME::Base64::URLSafe – Perl version of Python’s URL-safe base64 codec

I have also transfered the Wiki and Subversion repository from the old Google code hosting. I believe devzone is a great idea since free software is nothing (and boring) without a community. Thanks to all the people who helped with the setup (nix, jaco and others) I find the devzone admins to be helpful and friendly responding almost instantaniously to any request for help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx5p_wv_izo&feature=related

I am a big fan of free/open source software and only use free software were I can. My operating system of choice is Ubuntu Linux and the library is developed using free software. Only one problem is that I can not test on Windows. So if you are interested in testing on Windows and writing one or two tutorials let me know. When I am not programming I teach undergrads at Tswane University of Technology.

Ok enough about me and if you are new to Perl welcome to darkside of programming

ps. B. A. Baracus was elected grand pumba at the last project meeting