amiga-news.de - Advent Calendar: Door 11

11.Dec.2022 Advent Calendar: Door 11 - Alain Fontanin
For the third Advent and the eleventh door, we asked Alain Fontanin for an anecdote.

Alain and his text editor "Amiga Source Editor (2019)", of which he has recently released version 2.0, is on the one hand a wonderful example of how nostalgia and the "memory of the good old days" can give rise to active software development in the here and now, and on the other hand how the Amiga community can help each other and other readers and developers can advance projects through feedback.

In our introductory news item to the new edition of his editor almost exactly two years ago, Alain reported that development had originally begun in 1989. Then, when he watched the documentary "Viva Amiga" in 2019, he was reminded of what was for him a "wonderful time". Since he was no longer programming for his Mac, he decided to pick up where he left off in 1991 with the development of his text editor.

This was driven forward by feedback from our readers, especially in the early days, and now you can see the current state of his project for yourself. In an interview with Alain conducted by David Brunet (French Amiga magazine Obligement) you can learn more about him. Among other things, he has promised implementations for other Amiga systems.

We continue to keep our fingers crossed for his editor and now look forward to his anecdote:

"When Amiga-News.de proposed me to participate in this project, I found it very interesting. Then while thinking about what to tell, I was afraid of "Grandpa tell us the war", well kids sit down, grandpa will start the story!

I participated in only one professional development project on the Amiga, it was during my military service in an electronic squadron in 1992 (my military diploma says C programmer on PC and Amiga!). Why should I tell you about this?

Well, this is the only computer project in my career for which I could neither exchange with the users nor visualize the final result (security reasons). The project consisted in managing through an Amiga 2000, the display of the video network of the electronic operations center. I had to exchange on the specifications, the evolutions and the bugs with a non computer scientist correspondent, who did not have access to the operational center (!) and I had only an Amiga 500 with a color screen (whereas the display of the video network was monochrome).

The first deliveries were catastrophic: nothing worked properly, I was ashamed when I reported to the IT manager. I tried at first to improve my code (without success), before understanding that my salvation lay in the collaboration with the correspondent, I trained him in the use of the Amiga system, I fully integrated him in my development project. He was thus able to exchange more efficiently with the users and to give me reliable information.

Finally, in 6 months (part-time, because I was also developing on Windows 3.0), I had a functional product for my return to civilian life. What I learned from this experience is that it's not enough to be technically competent, you have to be able to interact with all the stakeholders and this is often the most complex thing for a developer to do. This has served me well since then!" (dr)

[News message: 11. Dec. 2022, 07:00] [Comments: 0]
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