Where is NAVBOX?

[Keef]

I'm glad to hear Navbox and Olof are alive and well. I look forward to the new version.

I've used Navbox for longer than I can remember (Peter could probably look it up), and always found it did the job I asked of it - and did it well. I do my routes (when I plan them) using it. Sometimes I use Navbox Plogs (but have to transcribe frequencies and the like onto them because the programme doesn't do that).

[Peter Pan]

I bought my trusty Skyforce IIIc gps back in 2003 and Harry (Mendelssohn) recommended Navbox software instead of the carp Skymap stuff. It has got me all over the UK and France and although not the latest whizzy thing has always been easy to use and reliable.

I lent Tim my IIic twice now to help develop the SD interface for it and think his software is superb. But at the end of the day I just want to do some basic nav on a pc at home, upload some plogs and go fly. The IIIc is still a great GPS, I have backups on 2 smartphones and I use a chart.

As an IT bod involved in writing web and phone / tablet apps I can say Android is the trickiest from a commercial view.

[peterh337]

I wish the best to Navbox too. A great tool for European VFR.

You have missed out the most important thing

- complexity of the application.

This is self evident. Also it may be so large that it needs several programmers to work on it. This adds a massive overhead.

A GPS moving map is a complex app? You have to be kidding.

I've written stuff 10x more functionally complex, in Z80 assembler, including the graphics libraries for polygons, circles, arcs, irregular polygon fills, etc, and I am only 1/10 as clever as some people I have worked with.

A really competent programmer is fantastically productive. Also he will have done so much stuff in a "previous life" so he is building on the back of that.

The problem is that there are very few of them. This is largely because the pay structure in most companies is rigged so that the only way to get past Xk p.a. (where X is somewhat variable) you have just two options

1 - stop doing productive work and move into "management", or
2 - leave and start your own business

If you have a family, then #1 is the only option because you can't take a risk. Also it's very hard to start a software business from scratch these days, because most obviously desirable functionality is off the shelf, and the internet has robbed software of most value.

[stevelup]

A GPS moving map is a complex app? You have to be kidding.

Yes, plonking a little plane symbol on the top of a raster chart is completely trivial. But that's not what we're talking about here...

[Oxo147]

Peter,

So it turns out you are one of those who quote selectively in order to "win" an argument. I don't have time to debate like that, so I will step aside.

Oxo

[Tim Dawson]

I think the best thing for everybody here would be for peterh337 to put his considerable talents to use, and write a GPS moving map that pleases everyone. After all, it's easy...

[Lefty]

I think the best thing for everybody here would be for peterh337 to put his considerable talents to use, and write a GPS moving map that pleases everyone. After all, it's easy...

[Rod1]

I think the best thing for everybody here would be for peterh337 to put his considerable talents to use, and write a GPS moving map that pleases everyone. After all, it's easy...

[SteveN]

Take the pee if you wish but much of what Peter is saying rings true to me. I used to carry all my I/O subroutines about on something called a "DECtape" and there were no APis in my day. I accept that modern SW development has different problems (as my son keeps reminding me) I am a dinosaur.

All I can say is the Android ADT looks frankly amazing. Even an emulator builder in there. It's multi platform and a licence costs the developer....... nowt! I would have died for something like that.

Good programmers CAN be amazingly productive and I'm sure both Tim and Olof come into that category. Often writing alone for a project of this size is the most efficient with perhaps specialist help for database and documentation.

The point of this thread is "customer forums" like this offer feedback and suggestions very quickly so the programmer doesn't waste time writing stuff that won't sell. So many times SW has been developed to a customer specification that turns out to be not what the customer actually needed. MOD were notorious for that. PocketFMS and Skydemon have superbly identified a new resource and both have been very successful, deservedly so. I hope Navbox also take advantage of it

Anyway back to my "C" swamp to become extinct.

[eharding]

I think the best thing for everybody here would be for peterh337 to put his considerable talents to use, and write a GPS moving map that pleases everyone. After all, it's easy...

To make things fair, I think we should make him do it using a Z80.

Always a 6502 type myself - ZX81 vs. Acorn Atom was the Android vs. Apple bunfight when I was a lad.

No time for those fawning Zilog fanbois.

Started my career hacking silicon for Fairchild Semiconductor - who sponsored my Master's degree - still have a Versatec plot of that chip on the wall - designed using graph paper - plus a few wafers, having liberated the layout from Rutherford Appleton after I started at Fairchild (anyone else remember the brain-damage that was Prime OS?)

Nasty things though, chip fabrication plants in those days - you were never sure what would kill you first - the stuff that was highly explosive or the stuff that was highly toxic.

Frankly, anyone who hasn't hacked their own silicon before writing the software to run on it is a screaming lightweight, I reckon.

[Rod1]

I am guessing I am the only one who used MACRO-11 assembler? Before those micro things got popular.

Rod1

[Tall_Guy_In_a_PA28]

Rod - I remember having to reverse engineer some Macro-11 so that it could be re-written in FORTRAN for a flight simulator (DC-10, I think). Happy days.

[gaxor]

Could someone write a version for my Raspberry Pi

[stevelup]

People are working on getting Android itself running on the Pi which will be interesting...

[mossie]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/02/canonical_announces_ubuntu_for_phones/