Tommi Laukkanen was one of our most prolific Codegeist entrants this year -- submitting four individual plugins, each of which was very cool. I was even more impressed after reading his blog entry about the process where he reveals that these were the first Atlassian plugins he had ever written! He writes about the experience:
I hadn’t coded JIRA plugins before so I started from a simple Parent Issue Summary plugin that improves the usability of issue lists when organization is using issue sub-tasks. It was fun to learn how other’s have implemented APIs in their system. JIRA’s API turned out to be very developer friendly and well documented. One can always learn great deals of API development by coding plugins for different software (and of course by using the API that he/she is developing aka eat your own dog food).
He then went on to code the Random Issues Filter Portlet, the Confluence Page Portlet and the Agile Wall Report. All of those in six weeks! As Tommi said, "After coding the first plugin it felt too easy so I had to go on." So, you have it first hand: writing plugins is easy, fun and potentially profitable. What are you waiting for?
1 Comment(s)
Thanks Jonathan for a kind post. I have to admit that I developed those plugins in the last two weeks of the competition as I first thought that plugin development wouldn't be so easy and just didn't even try it. ...but then I just had to get that T-shirt :)
I am quite amazed and jealous how you guys at Atlassian have managed to create such an open and passionate spirit that encourages community to extend your products such easily to a whole new level. It is very fascinating to read Atlassian blogs from common developers to a free spirit owners or watch how you spend your days. I just wish that I would live in Sydney or San Francisco :)
I'm already continuing the plugin development as I'm extending the Agile Wall Report to include a portlet that can render the same kind of a view that the current report generates. In the future I might even add some AJAX to the report view so that our team could use it in the daily SCRUM meeting when we go through the current sprint progress.
Looking forward on the T-shirt delivery :)
By Tommi Laukkanen at May 26, 2007 12:17 PM