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I have just started learning how to program using LPTHW, and as my skill level develops I would like to start shipping code whether or not it's ready to be shipped, just to get into the habit of always shipping code, and not having the fear of shipping code.

Is there are a beginner friendly guide to shipping code?

Thomas Owens
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JosephS
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3 Answers3

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You mention shipping code versus shipping a product. Keep in mind that they're two very different things. If your true interest is shipping code:

  1. Set up a github, bitbucket, google code or <favorite hosting here> account
  2. Start a small project or, heck, start several
  3. Commit your code to your public source repository
  4. Publicly write about your experience and reference your repositories
  5. Attend local user groups and share your experience
  6. Look for feedback
  7. Adapt, refactor, add features, start new projects
  8. Share what you learn
  9. Look for collaborators - it's hard to get better without collaborators
  10. When you're ready, start shipping products
haylem
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Scant Roger
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5

Shipping code when it is not ready to be shipped is like juggling with nitroglycerin sticks in a bear cave during their seasonal nap. Something will fall down, there will be lots of noise and blood around and you will be stick with angry bears to deal with.

The best advice I can give is develop mindset and process of work that allows you to create a shipable code faster and more efficient.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/what-is-modern-software-development.html

This is a start.

Daniel Iankov
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When you're actually ready to ship your code (and not just because you want to, but because the code is ready), here are some resources.

I would follow Scant Rogers advice before doing any of this.

http://pypi.python.org/pypi - Python Package Index, usually used for libraries and all of these can be installed with the easy_install software

http://docs.python.org/library/distutils.html - The distutils package, which makes this incredibly easy to do

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/ - Debian maintainers guide. distutils "setup" function will allow you to make rpm and msi files for distribution on Red Hat (and Fedora and anything else that uses rpm's) and Windows, but it notably lacks the ability to make a deb package. You'll have to do that yourself if you want to try and get it into Debian. They're very strict about what packages they let in, so if it doesn't work, don't expect anybody to sponsor you.

jsternberg
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