Hacks & Code

golbikiw 0.3 is available for download. This version now features almost all features you know from other weblog software, like

• a posting archive


• categories (golbikiw even allows a posting to be of more than just one category)


• a permalink for every posting


• the wiki functionality, where every article is assigned a WikiWord, and where WikiWords insides articles are expanded


• a search function


• an RSS feed


• posting, editing and deleting articles

What is still missing is a comment function. I'm sure that will still take some time, as I don't really need it right now.



Now that the main work for golbikiw has been finished, it is time for a little summary: first of all, I never thought that writing a weblog software would be that easy. The Ruby language, a few well-designed classes written in it that do the weblog's core parts, Ruby HTML templates and bits [;-)] of Ruby glue code made everything really smooth. During development, I fell into a few Ruby traps (like in Java, variables are only references to objects), but all in all, development went great. It's also interesting what sloccount thinks about golbikiw:

Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC)                = 473

Development Effort Estimate, Person-Years (Person-Months) = 0.09 (1.09)

 (Basic COCOMO model, Person-Months = 2.4  (KSLOC**1.05))

Schedule Estimate, Years (Months)                         = 0.22 (2.59)

 (Basic COCOMO model, Months = 2.5  (person-months**0.38))

Estimated Average Number of Developers (Effort/Schedule)  = 0.42

Total Estimated Cost to Develop                           = $ 12,310

 (average salary = $56,286/year, overhead = 2.40).

SLOCCount is Open Source Software/Free Software, licensed under the FSF GPL.

Please credit this data as "generated using David A. Wheeler's 'SLOCCount'."

Of course, these numbers are ridiculous, as it took not 1.09 person-months, but something like 3 persons-days. And it cost me not US-$ 12,310, but exactly US-$ 0 (well, except for electricity and food, and my time, but that would have been spent even if hadn't written golbikiw).


I think, writing free software definitely makes me happier person. I can feel that, now that I again accomplished a project that is (IMHO) not only interesting, but could also actually be useful to some people.

golbikiw 0.2 is available. This version features WikiWord detection and linking, permalinks and several bugfixes (including the bug that ate all characters but [a-zA-Z ] in the subject).



I have to admit, I never thought it would be so early with the integration of the Wiki functionality. But hey, the sooner, the better. And I never thought that it would be that easy. Now, there are only two more features on my TODO list that I want to address, and that is comments and setting categories for each posting.