Nomenclature: four levels of developers...

This posting summarizes some email exchanges that have been going
on off the mailing list the last couple of weeks.

The following four target categories of developers have been identified:

- End users. For example, an SME that uses one or two robots
  for a visual inspection task.
- Application builders. For example, the company that programs,
  services and maintains this visual inspection application, and
  relies on Orocos components for its implementation.
- Component builders. For example, the researcher who codes an 
  algorithm for visually guided motion control, and makes it available
  as a component.
- Framework builders. The people that develop the Orocos framework.

This means that Orocos components will have different interfaces for
each level, with different authorization. The middleware activities
(CORBA, for example) that want to make distribution transparent will
only be visible by the builders.

In fact there is a fifth category: the object class builders: those
people that implement functional robotics algorithms as hierarchies of
classes. These people do not have to think in terms of middleware or
components, but just care about correct functionality.

Herman

-- 
K.U.Leuven, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics Research Group
<http://www.mech.kuleuven.ac.be/~bruyninc>  +32 16 322480