Hi all, I’m new to the forum so please don’t crucify me on a burning cross if I posted under the wrong topic.
I’ve been using Linux and BSD for years (more recently macOS too), and I’m finally starting to write useful code (mostly small utilities that save me time). I hate Windows with the intensity of ten thousand burning suns, and pretty much every other usable OS out there is a *nix. Haiku seems to be the only project that’s interesting, different, and actually works. I’ve played around with Haiku on real hardware a few times and more in a VM, and I’ve thought about using Haiku to sharpen my programming skills. My end goal is to make a meaningful contribution to Haiku itself, or write a useful application for it and release it as free software.
So where should I start? I’ve already bookmarked the coding guidelines, and they seem similar to the GNU style (which I’ve been trying to clean up my existing code to follow).
Also, I plan to develop for Haiku in a virtual machine, so can anyone tell me how to set the resolution to 1366x768 in VMware?
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See my notes on installing Haiku in VirtualBox, at http://web.ncf.ca/au829/WeekendReports/20121130/InstallingHaikuR1A4.html There’s a section there about video mode setting in VirtualBox. The notes are mostly still correct, except the tips for building Haiku have changed (see the online documentation).
Welcome echo209!
People get rarely crucified here, even for the most egregious offenses… 
Unfortunately, we only seem to have a Guide for Haiku on VirtualBox that deals with custom resolutions. Maybe give VB a try?
To get you going, there are DarkWyrm’s Programming with Haiku lessons that should be a good intro to the API. Always have the BeBook and Haiku Book at hand as reference.
You may want to check out Building Haiku. As Haiku comes with many apps and preference panels, they are good examples how GUIs etc. work in Haiku. The source is nicely searchable, too.
Check out the mailing lists and esp. the IRC channel for quick assistence.
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There is also a list of easy tasks in the trac
https://dev.haiku-os.org/wiki/EasyTasks
Or a list (i dont know how up to date) on the website:
https://www.haiku-os.org/development/getting-started/
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A little warning about the supposedly “easy” tasks, they not always are that easy.
In general, I would suggest just using Haiku, and see which features or applications you find missing. Then set out to implement them. The motivation of doing something that is useful for yourself can allow you to learn a lot of things and achieve writing complex code without even noticing.
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There are hundreds and hundreds of BeOS apps, games, addons and utilities that are open sourced, some of it run on Haiku, some of it needs to recompile (some needs “litle porting” to Haiku) and be added to repositories. Also, some of this goods can be extended or improved.
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Thank you for the responses. Sorry for necro-ing my own thread.
Would simple root-user separation be a good idea to try and add? I know BeOS was single-user (but in $CURRENT_YEAR this is pretty unsafe, also idiot-prone). Haiku has the security of obscurity now but I’m sure there was malware for BeOS that might run on Haiku.
I’m actually better at C than C++ now, and never really used any C++ specific functionality besides cout and didn’t get into the habit of overloading names. I’m writing a library of random functions of mine I copy and paste often where the function names are prefixed with the name of the library, and I’m trying to use the C99 standard so hopefully it’ll work with GCC 2 on Haiku.
I would personally love to see more games and software ported to Haiku, even small ones. As someone who’s not a professional programmer though, it’s difficult to estimate what constitutes as “easy” and what doesn’t. Especially since issues can easily stack up when working with code.
If I can make a suggestion for a port though: I would love to see a port of OpenRTC2 (open source RollerCoaster Tycoon port) made for Haiku. RollerCoaster Tycoon is one of those games that, like classic Doom, should run on anything. 