The Open Source U

This site was established with the my express desired to learn how  certain major open source software packages work; this was to be a personal endeavor to broaden my horizons.

As it turns out, I ended up enrolling in graduate school. I’m pursuing a Master of Science in Software Engineering — something I’ve been planing since my B.S. (which is as represented).

I lost my focus on this site but I don’t want to. I want to regain that focus and this is my first post to that end.

This post is the information I gather while setting up to review and understand how Mozilla’s FireFox works.

Getting Started with Firefox

A while back, before I had even started writing this post, I posted a question on StackoverFlow.com about how to learn about how FireFox works. I’ve received some great answers.

The answer I chose to accept was from jbinto; who gave a wonderful detailed answer and list of resources to pursue this. I’ll be utilizing these resources along with my own method of stumbling though the code.

I’ve started with the Windows Build Prerequisites page since I’ll be building on windows (vista). I imagine my greatest audience will be Windows users and hence I’ll stick with windows. But I do use Linux and Mac OS X too, so if you have a question about these environments, post a comment and I’ll try to address it.

I’ve downloaded and installed the package. It apparently includes everything you need to build FireFox — Including the Source Control Tool and diffing utilities and such.

I want to work on the latest tip; but apparently, the FireFox team uses Mercurial as their source control tool. I’ve never used this tool so this is good and bad. I can learn to tool but I  have to spend the scarce resource of time to do so. I’ll be taking a short deviation way from my current plan to learn the Mercurial basics.

I won’t be posting much on how to use Mercurial as there is plenty of documentation. Anyway, off to learn about Mercurial — I shall continue with this article series once I’ve obtained the tip of FireFox.

Since I graduated from my undergraduate program, I’ve been looking forward to enrolling in a masters program. I’ve put this desire far behind other things that have come up and I’ve decided that this year is the year.

I began by looking at different masters programs in my area. Below are some of the schools and programs that I’ve looked at. Ultimately, I’ve selected DePaul. I’ve know/known of a lot of people who have gone there and while they might not be the best they seem very good. I’m not MIT material, so I think that very good will suite me well.

DePaul [Selected]

There is no one reason that I selected DePaul. I was looking around the CDM building and it felt like a good school. I had some interaction with a professor and that interaction was positive and they fit most of my criteria that I was looking for in a graduate school. It wasn’t a perfect fit but I don’t think that any school would be…

I’ve selected the Software Engineering degree because I think of my self more as a software engineer than a computer scientist. I’ve posted both links for those that are interested.

http://www.cdm.depaul.edu/academics/Pages/MSinSoftwareEngineering.aspx

http://www.cdm.depaul.edu/academics/Pages/MSinComputerScience.aspx

Loyola

Loyola is further from my home than DePaul is; this was the biggest reason that Loyola lost out to DePaul.  But furthermore, they didn’t have a M.S. of Software Engineering degree. They have similar degrees but the Software Engineering title became important to me.

http://www.luc.edu/cs/_academics_graduate.shtml

Illinois Institute Of Technology

The campus is too far from my home. It’d be difficult to attend classes and continue working.

http://www.iit.edu/graduate_admission/programs/areas_of_study/telecom_software_engineering.shtml

Northwestern

Northwestern isn’t a likely candidate. They were an early favorite but they don’t seem to put much effort in their science degrees… They are mostly known for their business programs… Their MBA program is one of the best, according to many…

http://www.scs.northwestern.edu/grad/mscis/

Roosevelt

Roosevelt is not likely for me because they are more of a business school then a technical or general university.

http://cs.roosevelt.edu/academics/compsci/degrees/csms.html

Stack Overflow

Yes, I know stack Overflow isn’t a university. I posted some questions to gather information from the community… I wanted to share the links…

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/808546/grad-school-for-compsci-and-or-software-engineering

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/49054/computer-science-versus-software-engineering-which