OT:advise for developing Codecs

Hello Boys.,

After a very long time..!
Well, coming to my stuff,


I'm dividing the subject into two parts
I need you people to advise me on the later one.

     Part-1
[Lossy Technique]
________________

Yeah, I've got my own 'stuff' for Lossy compression techniques.
   that's it, done.

     
      Part-2
   [Koding Part]
___________________

As I'm not a Programmer,
Two of my friends who were actually 'C' programmers[not DSP guys]
got interested in the idea, has joined with me.

I wanna check my algorithm, how it is working on Images & sounds,

Please advise me how to start? I mean

I'm thinking like..,

download jpeg lib and
try to tweak it.

But my boys were not happy like this.,

Any Ideas, how to start?

   greetings,
     nimo. 

PS: A Big no to matlab, scilab, mathematica, gnu octave..etc.etc..
    its not my request... well, my boys are saying this to me..,