Due to 10000 char limitation I have to split this text into two parts.
Here is part 1:
* Can you tell us a bit about yourself.Well, this pretty typical question gets pretty typical answer. I'm 39
years old, live in Bialystok, Poland. I work at local technical university
as a technican. Married, two children. Nothing special. I guess anyone
just skips it to read more interesting questions ;-), so let's go
and answer them.
* Tell us a bit about your computer history.Hmm, it started about 1987 as far as I remember. I had an opportunity to
use a Timex 2048 at school, also someone from my family has got an Atari
65 XE. At the same time I've read all about computers I could get. There
were some popular paper magazines in Poland like "Bajtek", "Iks" and some
other. I've mostly played on computers I had access to, but some day I
have impressed my family by writing a program in Atari Basic playing some
music. Unfortunately my parents could not afford a computer for me. Then
being in the last class of a college I've got some prize from the
school so I was able to buy an Atari 65 XE with XC12 tape recorder. It was
in 1992, so the stuff was a bit obsolete already, but well. Later I've
bought a floppy drive (it was more expensive than the computer itself).
I've started to program my Atari in Basic, but after some time I have
switched to 6502 assembler... I've learned to program the chipset: Antic,
Pokey, GTIA. In the meantime I've finished the college and entered
university. I've started to think about getting an Atari ST.
* When did you first get in touch with Amiga and later MorphOS?Fortunately some of my mates at university had relatively modern
computers. I visited some of them, trying PC/AT and Amiga 1200. I may say
I fell in love with Amiga. Of course A1200 was way too expensive for me
those days, but in 1994 I could buy a second hand Amiga 500. The first
program I've tried was ProTracker 1.1A. It took a few sleepless nights
;-). Anyway while I like to compose some awful music ;-), I'm mostly
programmer. My first program on Amiga has been written in Amiga Basic and
was some boring university problem. As I like low-level programming I
have learned 68000 assembler and got some books on Amiga chipset
programming. Two years later I've discovered C language, started to
learning the Amiga operating system, got a harrdisk and Kickstart 3.0,
experimented with Amiga E a bit. After working through 1997 holidays as a
construction worker, I could afford an Amiga 1200, followed quickly by
Blizzard 1230-IV... Let's skip a few years and we have 2002, I'm selling
my A4000 with CyberStormPPC, UW-SCSI hard disk and Prometheus, because
Pegasos I from Genesi is waiting for me at customs.
After being an AmigaOS 4 betatester for a few months (it was at times when
some future AmigaOS 4 components were still 68k, so I've tested them on
my A4000), I've been approached by Genesi via Jacek Piszczek. They had a
job proposal for me, which I've accepted. While still working on A4000
I've written a completely new sound.datatype for MorphOS and a set of
sub-datatypes. What is really funny I've written them as 68k code, then it
has been recompiled for MorphOS by Genesi. As they were satisfied with my
work, they decided to send me a Pegasos. Then since 2002 I'm one of
MorphOS developers.
* What do you do when your not working on MorphOS?I very like programming, so I often spend 14 or more hours a day with
computers. There are also usual family duties... My other activities are
biking and composing some music. I also like to read a good book,
especially on quantum physics or cosmology, but also criminal stories and
political fiction. I must admit however, my life is dominated by computers
and programming.
* What are your part in the MorphOS development?In the MorphOS Team there are no strict assignments. We identify needed
development, then during some discussions we decide who takes given task.
Of course all of us have areas of experience and interest. My area is
digital signal processing. Then it is no surprise that my main
contribution to MorphOS is Reggae - an object oriented media processing
framework. On the other hand I also did many smaller things unrelated to
Reggae.
* Can you give us some examples of things you have been involved in?Reggae is the big thing for me. The whole concept and most its classes are
mine. Lately Michal Zukowski added many image decoders and encoders.
Another big project is my Lua language port. Sounds easy, but it is not
just a plain port, I would call it system integration. It has MorphOS
native dynamic module loader, support for ARexx ports. I also plan to
implement MUI module, so Lua will become not only versatile scripting
language, but also easy to use general purpose language for less demanding
applications.
Looking at minor things - I've for example implemented bugraport.library,
largely contibuted to charsets.library (including a shell command
ConvertText), wrote an extensive, updated documentation for
utility.library and so on. There are also a few things in progress.
* What is the biggest challenge you have been facing when developing MorphOS?Lack of free time. Fortunately bounties give me some freedom, as I can
reject some part-time work and code for MorphOS instead. I guess, you've
asked for programming challenges however. In fact there are none. Of
course there are problems to solve, but it is everyday programmer's
bread, so I see nothing challenging in it.
* Are you working on some features that we will se in MorphOS in the future?You can expect more Reggae classes and functionality. I also plan to add
MUI module (and maybe Reggae module) to Lua.
End of part 1
