ITK/10th Anniversary Activities/ITK Stories and anecdotes

ITK First Decade Stories and Anecdotes

What ?

Share with the community your stories and anecdotes of using ITK during the past ten years.

Format ?

This is an informal forum.

Short stories with funny connotation are more than welcome.

Examples

• Tell us about
  • The oldest computer in which you have run ITK
  • The weirdest compilation option that you have tried with ITK
  • The longest you have run an ITK program

Other options:

• Things my supervisor never knew about how I used ITK...
  • (anonymous submissions are fine in this one...)

• Saved by an Insight Journal paper
  • Have you been saved from having to write a lot of code, thanks to an Insight Journal paper ?
  • Tell us your story.

ITK Experiences at UNC, the CADDLab

ITK Grows Up!

• This story illustrates the difficult path ITK followed in its early years.
• Part 1: 2001-ish
  • Michael Bell, a research assistant in the CADDLab, walks into Stephen Aylward's office to discuss his project. He has begun using the beta version of ITK. When asked what he thinks about ITK, he responds:
    • "There are so many templates and long function names that I don't feel like I'm programming in C++ anymore" He did not mean that as a compliment!
• Part 2: 2003-ish
  • Julien Jomier, a research assistant in the CADDLab, walks into Stephen Aylward's office to discuss his project. Stephen suggests that he consider prototyping it using Matlab. Julien responds:
    • "Actually, I'd rather use ITK. It's faster." That was one of the best compliments ITK could receive!

CMake and ITK

• Even the ITK development team has their doubts!
• George Stetten and Stephen Aylward are sitting next to one another in an ITK developers meeting in 2002-ish. Bill Hoffman is presenting on CMake which is already gaining popularity. George leans over to Stephen and says
  • "Ever worry that the only good thing that will come of ITK is CMake?"
  • No doubt CMake has been a huge success, but so has ITK!!!