Just starting out (Week 1)

This was the first week of the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program in which I'm participating, so there was a lot of setup to do, and not so much actual coding. After a brief orientation about the program and why/how people [should] do research, my fellow REU students and I were sent off to our respective labs. There we learned about LookingGlass, the Community, the systems for developing each, and one another. After some exploration and world-building, as well as some delicious pizza, we were assigned our projects.

This summer, I will be working on creating a system that allows a user to "follow" other users in order to receive useful information about them. The idea behind this project is that inexperienced users can identify individuals whose worlds are impressive or display skills the novice user admires. By following the experienced user, the novice can learn about what steps the advanced user took to develop skills, what types of programming structues (s)he has used, etc.

Today I began setting up the framework for the system of followings. I created a database table that holds the information needed to store the relationship between the follower and the followee, as well as placeholder data for the table when it runs on my local instance during debugging. I added a Follow/Unfollow link in the worlds' show page, so that if a user is viewing a world that (s)he did not author, the option to follow the author-user is visible.

The next step will be to plan/sketch out the way in which information about the follwee and his/her activities is organized and displayed for the follower.

6/1/2012 Edit:

Yesterday post-blog-post, I added a Follow/Unfollow link next to the user's name on the user profile page, and also at the bottom of the page under the user info stats, because both places seemed like logical places to look for a follow button.