[waffffffle]

I am very interested in the concept of running a napster or napster-like server on my computer. I am a college student and a freshman computer science major (so I don't know too much yet) but I am applying for a summer program where I would spend 4 weeks basically programming whatever I want. I would love to create a napster-like service that would be limited to my school's network only. It would allow file sharing over the campus network which should assure that all connection speeds are very fast. I would love to make it cross-platform compatible.

Since the idea of this summer program is to gain experience programming, I'm sure that they would want me to write the entire thing from scratch, plus I honestly know very little. I took the intro CS class last semester and learned a little bit of C, but have not taken the next class yet because I would like to put it off until next year when I'll have this summer experience, hopefully. So I obviously have not created any software with a graphical interface.

so my question is, can I do this? Can I port Open Nap to OS X or can I write my own server AND client? Thanks for the help.

[sadie]

It sounds fascinating, but honestly I don't think you're up to it. I'm a CS final-year, and I'm not sure if I'm up to writing Peer-to-Peer apps. Networking is potentially a very complex area of programming.

If you do want to try, go ahead, but make sure you know all the languages and interfaces BEFORE you start - four weeks will be extremely an extremely tight deadline.

Porting an existing app is probably more like it, but again, learn stuff in advance. Don't just drop into it with a four-week deadline.

[parallax]

That would be four very busy weeks.

But I think Fanning wrote Napster in a weekend, or the equivalent time. (?)