We finally got some new developers on our team. Unfortunately they do not have the computers they need to do any work. So now they are doing a lot of reading. Initially we thought their computers would be in quickly. Now it looks like that is not going to happen. The new plan is for these new developers to code by email.Here is how this is supposed to work. An existing developer with a computer will email them the code to a non-development computer they have. Then coding changes will be done "in the blind". They then email the code changes back to developers who do have access to the correct computers. The theory is that this will allow them to do development. In reality, this is most likely a big fail.
There might be some good to come out of this. The new developer I am working with is longing to look at some real code on our project. This will enable that ability. However it seems to be a waste of time to have a newbie do some coding where they cannot even do a compile or run the application.
The optimist in me says that this is an interesting problem for me to do some coding in. I can perhaps code up a program that monitors for emails from the new guys, takes the code they send, tries to compile it, then returns the build results to them by email. If I can automate all that, I will be king. We can think of this as a sort of email virtual machine.
