Quality of Hacks <-> Source Code improvements
 

Hi @LL,

i would like to open a survey for the following question:

Do you think a new section for PHP/VB Code could be usefull ?

Why i am asking this ?

Because i am looking at the history of unix itself. Some users sat down and wrote some c/c++ functions and compiled them. More users joint the team and optimized their code. This continued and continued and in the end they brought the first version of linux to the market.

This could have been done by some people but due to the teamwork of all people and having the sources available to everyone the quality of the source code was improved, the performance was improved and people could focus more on enhancements rather then reinventing the wheel.

So what i am suggesting in detail is:

How about creating a new section for public free available functions/source codes for VBulletin integration. At the moment many people are struggling with things like:

- How do i convert the unix time to a readable time format ?
- How can i read out to which group a user belongs ?
- How can reduce my MySQL queries on my forumhome ?

These are typical questions which can be found in 80% of all threads for new hack developers.

All of them have one thing in common. They have a good idea and they are struggling to bring out their hack due to not knowing all the background. Due to this i would like to build a center of information with functions or code parts which are publicly available to all people.

Benefits for the end users:
- requested Hacks can be produced in a quicker time frame
- the quality of the source code will be improved because all the codes will be reviewed periodically

Benefits for the hack creators:
- new Hacks will be created faster
- the quality of the source code will be improved
- performance overheads will be reduced due to using standard code parts

Benefits for VBulletin:
- if the source code meets the appropriate quality some of the functions can be used for further releases of VBulletin
- if more hacks will be produced Vbulletin can choose between multiple hacks to integrate them into later releases

Please give me some feedback what you think about this idea. I would like to have a small discussion about this.

I personally think that this could be a big improvement for this site. But what do other people think ?

Thanks for your answers in advance.

Cheers,

I'm sure such an area would be useful because of the reasons you mentioned.

However the concern with such forums are that everybody likes to get codes from there but not too many people like to contribute codes. This is the case with out hints forum or hack requests forums.

So I think the question we should ask is not whether it would be useful or not because I'm sure everybody would agree that it is useful. Rather the question is to ask is how many people are willing to contribute in such a forum on a regular basis. If we can have enough number of volunteers, we can open the forum. Otherwise our hints forum can still be used for this request.

Valid point. What is your experience from the members here ? Are they open to share source codes or are they so introverted to hide their code from everyone ? This would help all of them to improve source codes but if no one joins in, it would make no sense. I agree with you totally.

Cheers,

Hacks are open source so I believe most hackers do not have any problems with sharing their code. But I guess most can not easily commit time to put the codes in a shape and release them in a forum. This sometimes becomes a problem even with hacks. So I believe such a forum will be deserted. But I wish I'm wrong on this so if people are willing to contribute, I'd be happy to hear their voices here. :)

Actually, Logician, this is under debate in the following thread.

according to Steve Machol,
The copyright issues start on page 2;
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...t=65233&page=2

Hi Maximux1,

this is not the topic of this survey. Your argument is valid but we should not discuss about integration hacks or independant hacks for VB. The terms and conditions of this domain are clearly defined. If you have a problem with the copyright then please continue in your thread.

I read your thread and you should continue your discussion. We discuss something else here.

But thank you for pointing this out.

Cheers,

Interesting idea. Bear in mind that you were describing the development of open source software in your first post - vBulletin is not open source software. A collaborative approach to improving vBulletin makes copyright and intellectual property issues complicated.

Hmm. This is true. But to be honest ? 13 responses in that time frame ? I think that there is not much interest in something like that.

I am personally disappointed that people do not care about a general improvement. But ok. If they want it like this ...

Can be closed.

Cheers,

Don't get discouraged. The problem here is about finding expert users who can devote time to build such a library and this is usually the most important problem in this site. All of our members can benefit from this site but unfortunately few can contribute highly to build the content of this site (hacks, codes, hints, answers to questions etc.) so sometimes we get stuck in certain issues like this. Your idea was great.

The idea IS great. Jelsoft would be wise to put a few dollars/resources to this exact project... more tools for 3rd party developers to extend functionality isn't anything new...

Cheers,

~Regs.

Hi Regs,

but this is what they already do. They look what is requested from the field and then they look what makes sence for implementing into the product.

Something like Petz or Arcade is a nice add-on but not really important for a forum.

We as coders suffer every time from VBulletins restructures. It took ages to find out what all functions do. Now with VB3 i like a lot of the new stuff but again we suffer from things like userfields which are a pain in .... to handle them correctly.

I do not think that VBulletin will spend dollars or resources on this because they have their own coders and it is their copyright on their code. This is my personal opinion. You can correct me if i am wrong.

The idea why i suggested this via this survey, was to create a common code basement for coders like us. It can be added very easy to existing VBulletins and due to a good documentation ( which has to be created from ourselves ) it should be easy to focus on the real add-ons and be more creative.

The feedback so far was not overwhelming and i just had 2 pms from users who would like to join me in that area. The others are either not interested or they want to protect their own code. This is up to them. But we 3 users VB.org will not start a project like this. Good idea but as we say in germany: "Right time at the wrong place.".

Cheers,

Unfortunately whatever people say, vBulletin is not designed (source-code wise) to expand functionality. If this were the case you'd find vBulletin would be designed around classes with each feature of vB and it's sub-features and behaviours represented by objects. It would be great to see this one day - sort of like how PHP nowadays has class libraries such as PEAR and the new template engine that i've forgot the name of :p ;)