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Hi Therese,

you're right, there's still no sideral zodiac on the charts application.

I would really like to add it someday, but unfortunately it is low in my priority list as it does not make much economical sense for me. For instance, right now I can only think of two persons that use Sidereal Zodiac, you being one of them.


Regards,
Jo?o Ventura

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jventura wrote:Hi Therese,

you're right, there's still no sideral zodiac on the charts application.

I would really like to add it someday, but unfortunately it is low in my priority list as it does not make much economical sense for me. For instance, right now I can only think of two persons that use Sidereal Zodiac, you being one of them.


Regards,
Jo?o Ventura
Me too.

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pankajdubey wrote:
Me too.
....and also Konrad and Pierre, and a few others who comment now and then on the sidereal forum such as unique_astrology. But very few compared to the tropical contingent unless one lives in India.

Perhaps I'm being optimistic, but I firmly believe that one day there will be only the sidereal zodiac for astrology. This can be proven mathematically if astrologers will only look at what is there. One example is that transits have smaller orbs to the birth chart when precession is removed as we get older. I've given a few examples of this on the mundane forum on the U.S. 2016 Election thread.
http://www.snowcrest.net/sunrise/LostZodiac.htm

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jventura

I can't imagine it would take much additional programming time to add a couple of sidereal zodiacs for the top two or three ayanamshas for now. I'm sure you're using the swiss ephemeris right? In which case there is no computational work on your part, just the presenting it as both an option and any additional rendering differences that would be required to display it nicely.

I think it's one of those things where, even if you believe not many people would use it, it's something which makes it seem less amateurish as a product. For example I see you have included the Azimuthal and Meridian house systems - do you know anyone who uses these regularly? I can think of a lot more sidereal astrologers - in fact I cannot think of any who use Meridian houses at all.

Or is it more that you want to push a particular philosophy as regards what you hope your software will be used for? Do you consider yourself an astrologer yourself out of interest?
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

https://heavenlysphere.com/

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Paul wrote:jventura

I can't imagine it would take much additional programming time to add a couple of sidereal zodiacs for the top two or three ayanamshas for now. I'm sure you're using the swiss ephemeris right? In which case there is no computational work on your part, just the presenting it as both an option and any additional rendering differences that would be required to display it nicely.

I think it's one of those things where, even if you believe not many people would use it, it's something which makes it seem less amateurish as a product. For example I see you have included the Azimuthal and Meridian house systems - do you know anyone who uses these regularly? I can think of a lot more sidereal astrologers - in fact I cannot think of any who use Meridian houses at all.

Or is it more that you want to push a particular philosophy as regards what you hope your software will be used for? Do you consider yourself an astrologer yourself out of interest?
I think you're demonstrating here that you have no idea what's involved in software development. While it's true that the Swiss Ephemeris makes programming easier in this area, depending upon what you want to do with the data, you can easily write thousands of lines of code. I wouldn't consider an app amateurish if it didn't have sidereal and considering that a single misplaced period will cause the program to not even compile, even the smallest of programs coming out working correctly demonstrates a superior intellect.

The other problem that has plagued the industry of astrological software development is that every astrologer want's their own program in exactly their own way. Standards have gone out the window and every astrologer has their own unique way of doing things. It's simply impossible to cover every technique and do a good job at the same time. So I'll tell you what Robert Hand once told me after I asked the main astro software companies to include the Hellenistic astrological techniques; if you want it badly enough, why not do it for yourself? Gary Christen was not incorrect when he said that there's no money in it. If you're working in this field and you don't write Solar Fire or some other mainstream program that will appeal to mainstream counseling psychological astrologers, you can't survive on it alone. It's not about pushing a particular astrological agenda, but that many times astrologers make requests that are known in the software industry as "code breakers", and if you have to make a living some other way, then you can only put in whatever spare time you have left over.
Curtis Manwaring
Zoidiasoft Technologies, LLC

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Hi zoidsoft

Thanks for you post - I notice you seem quite irritated by mine.

Let me go through your points one by one, as they seem to hope that their audience is indeed clueless about software development. I can only assume that you wanted to be critical for the sake of it, and hoped that I really was clueless about software development so wouldn't/couldn't contradict you.

Honestly though, I have no idea why you made these, often ridiculous, remarks, in fact if you really believe that any of the objections you put forward are genuinely a problem in preventing a sidereal option being added, then to be blunt, I would really question your own understanding, training and experience in software development. That said, I'm sure you know that these 'problems' you presented are fictitious, but then the only reason I can think of that you would present them is to be contradictory for the sake of it.

But anyway here goes.
I think you're demonstrating here that you have no idea what's involved in software development.
As you've chosen to call into question my qualifications here, let me start right here and expand. This seems embarrassing to me that you really believe this (for apparently no reason) and I'm not really one to speak about myself a whole lot, let alone toot my own horn, but this will at least cut to the chase so we're not dancing around this quite ignorant critique here.

I have a post-graduate degree in computer science (MSc Computer Science) and my career is in software and web development - including at times for iPhone devices (Objective-C, Swift) but mostly focusing on large scale javascript heavy web development, including server-side (Node, but also Java, Scala and PHP) and database (Mongo, SQL-based) development. I also have a degree in Multimedia Design (BSc) focusing on designing for rich interactive interfaces though I focused on UX. I suspect this software we're talking about has a huge overlap in these technologies.

Just to drive home the point, I both trained and coached in web and software development for large international media and tech agencies as well as, at times, external to the company at hack days and tech meet ups. For the last couple of years I've been operating in a leadership and management capacity in helping ensure that good standards of software development are followed, coaching staff whilst still focusing the majority of my time (or at least as much as I can get away with) on the actual software and web development.

So I feel fairly well qualified to give my opinion. You are of course free to disagree with it - but it's simply not the case that I have "no idea what's involved in software development". In fact I find your assumption here quite arrogant and surprising, making comments about people that you really know nothing about is not only unnecessary arrogant but also ignorant. I have no idea why you choose to do that, maybe you're just having a bad day because I think in truth you probably don't actually believe that the problems you present here are *actually* enough to prevent someone adding in a sidereal option, you must have some ulterior motive, but you're welcome to it.
depending upon what you want to do with the data, you can easily write thousands of lines of code
You mention thousands of lines of code - it should not take any competent software developer thousands of lines of additional code to integrate a sidereal option from the swiss ephemeris - if it does, their code must be a total mess with no adherence to design patterns or S.O.L.I.D best practices. Are you suggesting it took/would take 1000s of lines of code to add in a sidereal option?

I remain convinced that it would not be a huge mountain of work to integrate the sidereal zodiac with a couple of popular ayanamshas - in fact the hardest part is probably more in the UX and design considerations than in the programming. If these coding practices are indeed followed, with design patterns (like factory methods) put in place, and if standards (like SOLID principles) are followed, programming changes like this (as you probably know, but it's always possible you actually don't - are you self-taught or trained?) are actually not a lot of work. When it comes to best practices, all software developers should be coding to expect change. In addition with software like this it's expected now that there are life cycles of releases and changes which can be incorporated in a flexible manner to solve exactly this problem - it's not for nothing that waterfall methodologies have been largely replaced by agile and agile-like approaches. Of course these methodologies are controversial and morphed from their original idea but you get the idea - no piece of software is ever 'finished' these days.

In short then, if it's taking you thousands of lines of code to incorporate a sidereal option, when most of the calculation for this is already provided to you via some API, then you've seriously messed up your software application. If it's not taking you thousands of lines of code to incorporate the sidereal option, which is actually all I've mentioned, then I don't see why you bothered to make a counter argument to a point I never made. Straw man?
considering that a single misplaced period will cause the program to not even compile, even the smallest of programs coming out working correctly demonstrates a superior intellect
Attention to detail and a logical mind does not necessarily make a superior intellect, in fact this kind of egotistical assumption is rife in the software development industry making software developers often unapproachable to their co-workers who feel that they are often not respected or understood by them, or worse that they're belittled and condescended or not important.

In any event compilers and debuggers flag up these character-based mistakes very quickly pointing exactly to the line number and character reference to pinpoint these problems - as of course you know. A misplaced dot or semi-colon never prevented anyone adding in new functionality, to even suggest it is frankly ridiculous. I'm sure a misplaced character is not the problem with incorporating the sidereal zodiac, do you disagree? Are you suggesting otherwise? If not, why are you mentioning it? Do you think that this is a major problem in preventing a sidereal option being added?
The other problem that has plagued the industry of astrological software development is that every astrologer want's their own program in exactly their own way
Actually that's not a problem, it's how most businesses (if they can afford it) operate in reality. If it wasn't, every single professional organisation would simply use templates like wordpress or squarespace or their equivalents. Of course these are fine for small businesses in which customisation is not always required. People want what they think their client-base will need, but also what they think they think their client-base doesn't even know that they need yet. Innovation is not a problem.
Standards have gone out the window and every astrologer has their own unique way of doing things
We're talking about sidereal astrology here though right? Are you suggesting that there's some astrological standard which should rule out sidereal astrology?

Or some programming standard? Which one do you have in mind, I'd be delighted to hear it. In fact, I would argue precisely the opposite, if you've followed good programming principles and standards, this should be little problem as I said in my original post. In fact it's exactly the kind of thing I might expect from a phase 2 release or as the application expands. Jventura himself even said it's on his list. Let's not pretend there's some programming reason it cannot be done, especially not a standards driven reason.
It's simply impossible to cover every technique and do a good job at the same time.
This is the sidereal zodiac, not "every technique". As I pointed out in my previous post, there are options for house system that chances are nobody is ever going to really use, but the sidereal zodiac seems like something fairly common place and I know many people would be very happy to use. Do you disagree? Do you think more people use the Meridian House System than use a sidereal zodiac of some kind? What other techniques have I suggested which you think prevent you or jventura or anyone else "doing a good job"?
I wouldn't consider an app amateurish if it didn't have sidereal
Which is fine, I don't think I was expecting you or anyone else to agree, I'm happy to agree to disagree. But in today's world where we have apps that do similar things and are also free or very inexpensive, the reality is that we need some criteria to differentiate value and whether someone is approaching it as an amateur task, or hoping to provide a professional level of service. Whilst I wouldn't necessarily expect that the first release of the code has every single feature (see above about Agile) I think it's reasonable to say that features like this would make a big difference.
if you want it badly enough, why not do it for yourself
Sure, and many people have. I presumed, however that jventura is operating under the idea that not really many people at all are using the sidereal zodiac. I think there are probably more than he thinks.

You gave a whole lot or reasons why you might find it difficult to include a sidereal option, suggesting it takes great intellect to do software development, that it can take thousands of lines of code to add new features, and findally that if you really want it, do it yourself. But it's not the reason jventura, who I was addressing, gave. He's obviously a completely competent software developer, as we might all imagine, instead his reluctance is simply (Thu Sep 15, 2016 11:18 am) "it is low in my priority list as it does not make much economical sense for me". I'm not sure why then you're presenting all these unrealistic programming problems.
but that many times astrologers make requests that are known in the software industry as "code breakers"
I disagree that "the industry" refers to things this way, but apart from that, do you think that adding a sidereal option would be a code-breaking ordeal? If not, why are you mentioning it when you consider that's all that has been suggested?
if you have to make a living some other way, then you can only put in whatever spare time you have left over.
Tell me about it.


To conclude, if you think that in relation to adding in a sidereal option, one needs to have a superior intellect, break standards or introduce code-breaking bugs (etc) or require thousands of lines, then I guess we can just agree to disagree. But actually I don't think you do believe that, so it's anyone's guess why you bothered to present them to me and even less why you choose to present it to me in the assumption (and hope) that I really am clueless about software development.
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

https://heavenlysphere.com/

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Paul,

My statements only seem ridiculous to you because you're taking my "thousands of lines of code" out of context. I said "depending upon what you do with it". A sidereal option is a one liner in Delphic Oracle (except for the user defined zodiac). I follow OOP principles and rarely hard code anything, but if you wish to display that sidereal zodiac in a unique way, yes, thousands of lines of code. For starters, converting the real values into points viewed on the screen for thousands of objects like fixed stars and planets is a protracted matter (polar to Cartesian conversion is what it's called) even when using arrays and loops to simplify the code.

So good for you that you actually know something about software, but you were writing before like you couldn't understand why Joao wouldn't do this, but the answer is simple: where does it stop? There's no payoff.

I'm sorry you wasted several paragraphs on this. I was simply venting my frustration that everything under the Sun can't be programmed by one person, so I fully understand Joao's position.
Curtis Manwaring
Zoidiasoft Technologies, LLC

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Oh - as for a missed semicolon, that's no problem in IDE's of today as the compiler will point that out. But back in the 70's and early 80's on a PDP 1170 mainframe... your youth is showing. Even in the 90's writing Perl for CGI had similar issues (using a simple text editor). If your eyes weren't good you could be looking for hours...
Last edited by zoidsoft on Sun Sep 18, 2016 6:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Curtis Manwaring
Zoidiasoft Technologies, LLC

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Zoidsoft
My statements only seem ridiculous to you because you're taking my "thousands of lines of code" out of context.
Actually the only context here is the suggestion that the sidereal zodiac is added - you decided to reply in contradiction to my opinion that this is a relatively straight forward matter by implying it isn't and talking about needing a superior intellect and then implying that thousands of lines of code may be relevant - if it isn't, to repeat myself in my last post, why bother mentioning it in reply to a suggestion it's straight forward to add the sidereal zodiac?
but if you wish to display that sidereal zodiac in a unique way, yes, thousands of lines of code
That entirely depends on how you present your information graphically, there's nothing stopping jventura doing something relatively straight forward for now, I don't think anyone suggested reinventing the wheel here.
For starters, converting the real values into points viewed on the screen for thousands of objects like fixed stars and planets is a protracted matter (polar to Cartesian conversion is what it's called) even when using arrays and loops to simplify the code.
Not so sure I agree. You need one method to convert any point to whatever. But then I don't disagree that there's some work involved, only that it's a relatively straight forward problem.

I should be totally open here, for my MSc end project and dissertation I programmed a basic astrology app from scratch using mathematical formulae for the planetary positions and figuring out or cobbling together various commentary or mathematical formulae for the houses until I understood them better. I'm familiar with the problems that this presents, but swiss ephemeris is really bypassing any of those kinds of difficulties, it becomes only a really a problem of presentation almost.
but you were writing before like you couldn't understand why Joao wouldn't do this, but the answer is simple: where does it stop?
With respect, I think I'm in a better position to determine my frame of mind when I was writing. I was writing from a position of hoping to demonstrate that for the amount of work that would be needed, it would open the app to a much wider audience, and that although some work might need to be done, it's relatively minor.

Notice how I never considered or discussed any future add-ons. You ask "when does it stop", to repeat my previous post, software these days can be understood as never being really finished, it's just at a particular state or life cycle. Jventura admits he hopes to add this in in the future anyway, perhaps you didn't read all his posts, so my suggestion and frame of reference was actually more about saying, this would be a good one to do early, so as to not completely rule it out for a wide audience.
I was simply venting my frustration that everything under the Sun can't be programmed by one person, so I fully understand Joao's position.
A shame you had to do it by making false arguments addressed to me whilst claiming I knew nothing about the topic matter at hand. You're not an unintelligent person, I'm sure you could stretch yourself to find a better way to vent than someone's expense.
Oh - as for a missed semicolon, that's no problem in IDE's of today as the compiler will point that out. But back in the 70's and early 80's on a PDP 1170 mainframe... your youth is showing. Even in the 90's writing Perl for CGI had similar issues (using a simple text editor). If you're eyes weren't good you could be looking for hours...
I get it, I started learning Perl and C at 15/16 and even in the late 90s IDEs either cost money (which I didn't have) or weren't that great to begin with - I was never that big into either and lost interest quickly, but at the time it was very popular for handling web forms. I ended up learning PHP instead, something I now do whatever I can to avoid.

I understand what's required and why a missed semi-colon can be a problem. Again, I don't consider this to be anything to do with intellect, but rather having good clerical accuracy and attention to detail.

But as my point wasn't about a hypothetical situation in regards the history of software development, but rather a suggestion that jventura should be able to do this without a massive workload, I'm not sure why you said this in the first place. Am I showing my youth, I doubt it, it seems like a petty kind of critique to make for no reason, but then I could equally argue about whether you're sure you're not showing your age too? It probably wouldn't get us anywhere though.
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

https://heavenlysphere.com/

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Quote:
For starters, converting the real values into points viewed on the screen for thousands of objects like fixed stars and planets is a protracted matter (polar to Cartesian conversion is what it's called) even when using arrays and loops to simplify the code.
Not so sure I agree. You need one method to convert any point to whatever. But then I don't disagree that there's some work involved, only that it's a relatively straight forward problem.

I should be totally open here, for my MSc end project and dissertation I programmed a basic astrology app from scratch using mathematical formulae for the planetary positions and figuring out or cobbling together various commentary or mathematical formulae for the houses until I understood them better. I'm familiar with the problems that this presents, but swiss ephemeris is really bypassing any of those kinds of difficulties, it becomes only a really a problem of presentation almost.
Sure the PolarToCartesian() function is simple enough, but the drawing code is anything but, even when you're using the windows API wrapper (which I no longer use). Things have simplified quite a bit in the FMX environment so I no longer have to bother with Cartesian coordinate conversion, but the component that I wrote for the Chart Designer in Delphic Oracle was eventually simplified to 11,000 lines. (It used to be about 18,000).

I wrote a wrapper for the Swiss Ephemeris dll so that it could be listed as a component on the Component palette of the Delphi IDE using dynamic linking which helped with isolating the results obtained (for OOP - static linking would of course throw an error without the dll being present). Before that I wrote planetary calculation routines based upon Jean Meeus's "Astronomical Algorithms" using Keplers equation of center and a few of the more important planetary perturbation terms, but then I discovered the Swiss Ephemeris... The earliest versions of Timaeus didn't use the Swiss Ephemeris for planetary position calculations.
Curtis Manwaring
Zoidiasoft Technologies, LLC