Yes, similar to halfbakery, but not quite the same. Read on.

I rarely have insight into what problems software users have. It would be great to have a place non-programmer, idea people could meet non-idea, developer people. The idea folks would exclaim that "it would be great to have a program that did x". Once enough people wanted x, a developer would take ownership of the task and write a program to solve problem x.

This group would not focus on single areas of programming, but would make sure to be diverse in it's ideas. No idea would be too small or too large... you want a command line tool to setup ssh tunnels, a windows dialog to warn you of odd (hackish) network behavior, or an AI shopping agent to suggest items related to those you have bought before taking into account the current season (no lawn mowers in winter).

Of course this would be an open source only site. If it weren't open source, it would be consulting.

[updated] There seems to be a misunderstanding, so I've not explained myself well. I am a software developer. In my spare time I like to work on personal projects, but sometimes I'm plumb out of ideas. This is my motivation. From the other side, I'm sure there are people out there that have wonderful ideas, but who just don't have the time or skill s to come up with a solution.

I've searched long for something like this and have thought about developing one. Take this to be the first "idea" post. I'm curious about what you guys think.

[updated again 09-17-2003] techie Q/A sites don't answer this call. Those fourms are are like e-mail exchanges, and the noise to signal ratio can be overwhelming. I would like to add a system for moderation, so that kids that need their CS homework done for tham can be moderated down, whereas the insightful projects could be moderated up. Only programmers that have proven themselves (on the site, or by super-moderator moderation can voulenteer for the higher profile tasks.

for example,

there are two types of users, lookers, and doers.

looker S comes in with a question, "I need a bubble sort". With a critical mass of users this would be moterated down below the veiwing threshold of most doers.

looker K comes in looking for a way to re-order x86 binaries based statistical use so that they are speed optimized for memory loading before use. This speeds the binary by 10% since most frequently used calls are handy in memory when needed. A well rated doer sees that this is an interesting problem and connects with the looker about a solution. code could be written open source, or on a contractor basis, but hopfully documentation (at least) could remain tagged to the lookers original post.
-- butterhed, Jul 24 2003

expert's exchange http://www.experts-exchange.com
ideal for code questions [neilp, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

www.RentaCoder.com http://www.rentacoder.com
Almost what you suggest? [zen_tom, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

There are plenty of forums wherein people exchange solutions to programming issues. They may not operate in the way described, but the result is pretty much the same.
-- angel, Jul 24 2003


yes. there are developer forums for areas of development. I'm after more of a lending tree kind of environment. have developers fighting over your ideas. if the site specializes on any one kind of software (only tetex editing, or only p2p apps), then I don't want it. this keeps the developers involved, as they get to code in many different styles/techincal level/languages, and it keeps the inventors happy, since their probelm may soon be solved.
-- butterhed, Jul 24 2003


A course on the subject could help, they have courses online and you can even e-mail the professor.
-- sartep, Jul 24 2003


I have voted in the direction of baked goods.

bringing together the minds of of expert and novice, supply and demand, its one of the best uses for the internet.

this makes me think of a type of web page i just found out about. its called a wiki page. i'm not sure how ahead or behind the times i am in thinking that a wiki page is somthing new and inovative, but thats not the point.

a wiki page is a web page that lets anyone modify it simply and easaly. someone makes a page, someone else comes along and adds their idea too the page, someone else comes by and corrects somthing, and so on.

what i'd imagine you could do is make a wiki page where people go and post their problems, then people come by the web page, see the problem, and make programs/write code/ whatever, then post that and then the problems solved.
-- HalfwayHebrew, Jul 24 2003


then someone comes by and changes problem and solution to requests for porno site passwords.
-- bungston, Jul 24 2003


it works on the honor system. sheesh.

butterhed,

come to think of it i could use a little specialised program myself. i need a program to replace my typewriter. (dont laugh)

you see, i use my typewriter to fill out paper work in a neat and readable manner. but filling out box 4b then moving on to box 5 requires some tricky butten pressing because none of the boxes are evenly or regularly spaced. there may be an inch between two and a cm between the other two. the tye writer is the only thing that can make such minute adjustments in the position of the text.

the program I need is one that lets you put in measurements (such as Xcm form the left of the page and Ycm from the top with limits as to how far they go) and assign said measurements to entry fields. the end result would be that you fill in a bunch of boxes and hit print and they all come out of the printer in the right place. filling in the measurements would take a while so i'll need to be able to save measurement templates for the different forms that I fill regularly.

there you go, i've got an idea and you've got nothing better to do, what do you think?
-- HalfwayHebrew, Jul 24 2003


for the halfjew :) out there, we could scan your docs into a typical GUI editor format (MS Word, OpenOffice, wordstar...), and you can type nicely formatted text into the fields by point and click. Then print out your page. If you have many many many documents, there are industrial scanners that take in hundreds of papers to scan. For the individual with very few typewriter-type tasks this is not an efficient solution. For them, I would recommend a pen :).

p.s. sorry, it's been awhile since I could make it back here.
-- butterhed, Sep 17 2003


There's www.RentaCoder.com where people post requests for work which are filled by browsers of the site. There's not a great deal of inter-agent communication, and it's more of a market-place than anything else but it might be worth a look/give you some ideas. [link added]
-- zen_tom, Aug 16 2004



random, halfbakery