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Interview with Mike Sullivan
vBulletin Developer @ http://www.vBulletin.com/
by Floris Fiedeldij Dop (info@vBulletin.nl) - 27 February 2004
Provided to The Admin Zone by Floris on an article swap.
There we go ... ten questions for one of the vBulletin software Developers Mike Sullivan
Q: Hi there Mike, welcome and thank you for taking some time in your busy schedule to participate in this vBulletin.nl interview. Could you please start off by telling us a little bit more about yourself?
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My name's Mike Sullivan, obviously. My permanent home is in Allentown, Pennsylvania, although right now I live in State College, PA. As you might expect from that, I'm a Penn State student... well, at least I will be again soon. I'm currently on leave of absence for the spring semester and will be returning in the fall. I'm a junior in computer science and just recently turned 20 (well, about 2 months ago).
Aside from computers, I play roller hockey. Unfortunately, there isn't much of that here in State College, so I find myself wanting to drive back home for a weekend just to play some hockey. I'm addicted, I think. Other than that, programming really is my fix. I love learning things.I like to use the analogy of a puzzle; programs are essentially huge jigsaw puzzles. Have you ever tried to put together a 3000 piece puzzle? It's not exactly the easiest thing to do. Oh, and don't get me started on those 3D puzzles…
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Q: How did you get involved with Jelsoft and for how long have you been part of the team?
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Like many of the other "originals," I discovered vBulletin slightly before it came out, at the now extinct EzBoard. I had been hacking my UBB Freeware to bits and pieces, learning Perl along the way, when I stumbled upon the EzBoard and the beginnings of vBulletin. I didn't really understand the differences (DB vs flat-file), but it sounded interesting. I was able to become a beta tester for vB 1.1.0, tweaking the import script a little bit to get my UBB Freeware-formatted data into vB.
From there, I became active in vB's hacking community, releasing the original, basic private messaging hack (.9). I believe this was in May/June 2000. Shortly after, I followed it up with 1.2, which is fairly similar to the private messaging system you see now (folders, etc). Ironically, I can't think of too many other big hacks that I released, although I know I did.
That led to me becoming the moderator of the hacks forum, while it was on vBulletin.com, and starting the original incarnation of vBulletin.org with Chris Lambert. Obviously, since then it's been taken over and become much more popular.
Eventually, after being active in the community and beginning to work with Jelsoft, Freddie and I were brought on to help with development of 2.0; Kier joined slightly later in the 2.0 development cycle. From there, most people know the story.
I was originally hired in December 2000 and I remained with Jelsoft until September/October 2002. I then took a sabbatical until June 2003, which basically brings us to now. I guess that means I've been with the team for approximately 2.5 years.
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Q: What is your current role in the team of vBulletin developers? And what is your involvement in the current version (3.x) of vBulletin, and have you already started working on the next releases (3.1 or 4.x)?
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Right now, I'm working on bug fixing and documentation. I don't have a specific area in 3.0 that's mine, but I've pretty much had a hand in most things. If anything, you could consider BB code parsing mine, since I've become quite apt at regular expressions. When I rejoined the team in June, most of the existing code was there, so I didn't get to add too much.
As far as the next major release, we haven't officially started it -- 3.0's a bigger priority now -- but I believe each of us has some code that we want to get integrated. At the least, we all have some of our own ideas on top of the plethora of suggestions that our customers give us.
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Q: Are there any feature you thought about originally and you designed in the current release of vBulletin, if not will you, or someone else include them in the future versions?
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Well, "thought about originally" and "designed" are fairly different things. I've implemented a good number of ideas that were listed in our internal wish list, but I don't know who proposed most of them. Similar threads would be a good example of that.
A lot of my ideas tend to be behind-the-scenes things. Most people don't know about them, let alone care about them. They have an effect on everyone though.
I have a feature that I want to implement for the next version. I even wrote the code for it a while back. Essentially, it just needs to be cleaned up and integrated with a DB/vB's system. My lips (fingers?) are sealed now though.
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Q: Additionally, are you also the coder for this feature, or did another developer created it on your behalf and who credited you for the idea?
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It's a feature I've wanted to implement for a while, but I never had time to research it. Chen tipped me off on an algorithm for it, and I just went from there. I've been trying to decipher some academic papers to optimize it though. O(n^2) is too slow!
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Q: vBulletin 3 development took longer than vBulletin 2, but even though we've waited quite some time the features list is a lot longer than vBulletin's version 2. How would you comment on this, and what do you anticipate for the Gold release? With this in mind, how would you compare this to the development of vBulletin version 2? And do you think Jelsoft have met people's expectations with vBulletin version 3.0.0?
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vB 3's development has been pretty painful for me. It's dragged on much, much longer than everyone has hoped. It feels like everything that could've gone wrong, did. But none of that's news.
It's hard to say whether vB 2 and vB 3 development been significantly different or virtually the same. Some aspects have been the same, but had completely different outcomes. Expectations are certainly much higher now. Regardless, the development cycle hasn't been ideal and project/architecture planning is something that needs to be handled more seriously. Hopefully, I'll be able to help with that in the future, as recently some of my interests have turned more to software engineering.
In terms of meeting people's expectations with 3.0, yes and no. I hope that the software itself meets expectations; there's certainly a lot there. Obviously, I don't think the other stuff (the "non-technology" side) has been at the level that it can and SHOULD be at. At this point, we just have to learn from our mistakes.
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Q: How do you feel when you visit a site and you realize it's running your bulletin software? Or, Could you provide a few examples of sites that make you feel proud of vBulletin?
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Proud; it's fun to brag about it to my friends ("Oh, is that another vBulletin?"). I remember a while back, I was talking to a friend about some car stuff. He proceeded to pull up a vBulletin-powered site to show me something... "Dude, I wrote that software!" "Wha?! Seriously?" It's one thing to develop some software for you and maybe a few other people, but it's much more rewarding to develop something that a ton of people use.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any specific sites that I'm especially proud of. Although, it is cool to see some big companies using vB (Atari, for example).
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Q: As you know, vBulletin has a massive source code and template modifications database. What are your thought about those unofficial resources, any mods you really like?
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To be honest, I don't really spend much time at the sister sites. I just haven't really had the time to look into many hacks recently.
Let the lynching begin!
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Q: Are you also working on any other projects besides Jelsoft's product vBulletin? (And if so, which?)
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I'm working on a project with a friend in C#, but I can't really discuss anything about it. I will say that C# is a cool language and I really like the .NET framework. It really needs generics though. (Yes, I know it's planned.)
I'm hoping to work on any upcoming Jelsoft products too (you know, the fabled CMS).
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Q: In the near future would you like to continue working on vBulletin or would you like to start a new project ?
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vBulletin is a great project to work on. It's really hard to ask for anything more. Thus, I would love to keep working on it. Of course, I'd like to work on the CMS too, once work gets underway for that.
I wouldn't mind tackling other projects too, either related or unrelated. Right now, time is just the issue. Anyone hack their vBulletin to allow you to have more than 24 hours in a day?
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