Intervista a Tom Fairfield

Come avrete notato, altri siti in questi giorni hanno proposto delle interviste agli studenti che hanno proposto un progetto al Google Sumer of Code 2009.

Sono lieto di proporvi, in inglese, l'intervista a Tom Fairfield.

L'intervista sarà tradotta in italiano molto presto, in questo stesso post.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself
My name is Tom Fairfield, I'm a 22 year old Computer Science major at Xavier University in the United States.  I've been quite interested in computers and programming for a long time.

2. How did you hear of GSoC?
One of my professors told me about GSoC last year.  I applied, unsuccessfully, and then again this year. 

3. What convinced you that Haiku is a project worth working on?
I'm very interested in operating system development and alternative operating systems.  Haiku seemed like a very cool project to contribute to and the idea I decided to propose and expand on seemed right up my alley.

4. How'd you first hear about Haiku and do you have any experience with BeOS or Zeta?
I heard about Haiku in some article about alternative operating systems a couple of years ago.  I believe I was initially reading about ReactOS.  I've never used either BeOS or Zeta - Haiku is my first introduction to the family of operating systems.

5. What did you apply to work on,  why did that specifically interest you?
I applied to work on developing a Network Services kit which would provide access to web services such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and others.  This really interested me because I've been doing a lot of network programming lately so I feel I would be up for the task.  Also, in the process of developing the Network Services kit I will be able to build a Haiku HTTP framework which should be a fun challenge.

6. If you do not get the chance to work on the project you applied for is there another area that interests you?
I'd love to work towards a functional wireless stack  for Haiku - that seems to be the last major hurdle for Haiku to be a usable primary operating system.  I think it would be a much larger task than the Network Services kit but it'd be a fun challenge and very useful.

7. What influenced your decision to become a programmer? What is/are your language(s) of choice?
I've always been very interested in computers and also in how things work.  I began playing with some BASIC programs on my 486 box when I was quite young and since then programming has always been in the back of my mind.  When I started college I knew that it was something I wanted to pursue so I began working towards it much more seriously.  Today my languages of choice are C++, Java, and Python.  I also have been playing with Erlang and Haskell as of late and I'm really getting into the functional programming paradigm. 

8. Is there anything Haiku (as an organization, website, community, individuals, any facet of Haiku) could have done differently to help you as an applying student? Was anything overly complicated or discouraging?
The community was very accessible, even the developers mailing list (which can often be intimidating in open source projects).  I think an up to date "Getting Started" tutorial would have been very helpful and lowered the barrier to actually writing code.

9. Do you have any suggestions or constructive criticism for the people involved with Haiku's participation in GSoC?
Overall I think that Haiku did a great job with the process..

10. Besides Haiku, did you apply to any of the other orgs involved with GSoC? If so which ones?
I only applied to Haiku this year.  Last year I applied to ScummVM.

11. Would you be interested in a possible Haiku Code Drive? (a similar format to GSoC but specific to Haiku and donations are taken to raise money to pay the participants)
Yes, I definitely would.  I still believe fully in my proposal and will be working on it as I get the time - if I were able to receive some support I'd be able to work on the project much more full time.