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They are the stars in our computer life! They work hard to make our job easier, and deserve our appreciation! These wonderful people are the shareware developers!
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Our guest lives in Italy, spent three years in France, flies in and out of the US, and is a good friend of another Italian programmer wizard Alberto Ricci, whom he works with from time to time.
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I'm proud to present to you Alessandro Levi Montalcini, the legendary shareware author of many utilities and applications, like KeyQuencer, Niji, DragAnyWindow, SimpleText Color Menu, USB Overdrive... to mention a few and of course one of my favorite program ever, the Icon Archiver.
Thanks, Alessandro, for the special offer for our readers giving us the opportunity to promote the program we like so much.
Ilona: Please tell our readers how you got you started with computers and programming?
Alessandro: My father gave me a Sinclair ZX81 for my 10th birthday. It came with 1K of RAM and used the TV as a black & white text display, but it had a nice Basic language interpreter. I typed my first Basic program off the instructions manual as soon as I opened the package, and was immediately hooked. I got an Apple //e later on and kept playing with Basic until I bought a Macintosh 128K, then switched to my first C compiler (Lightspeed C 2.01) when I upgraded the 128K to a Mac Plus. My other main machines were the Macintosh IIcx, PowerBook Duo 230, Power Mac 6100, PowerBook 5300cs (the worst one ever), PowerBook G3 Series 250 (the best one) and my current PowerBook G3 Bronze 400.
Ilona: Which programming environment do you use? And which one do you recommend to a beginner?
Alessandro: I've been using Metrowerk's CodeWarrior since their first PowerPC release and I'm very comfortable with it. For beginners, the most appropriate environment really depends on the kind of software they want to write. CodeWarrior is great for everything from C to Java, but higher level environments like RealBasic let you create a working application in minutes without any knowledge of the Mac toolbox.
Ilona: How did you come to work with Alberto Ricci and what is the process when two programmers are working together?
Alessandro: I've known Alberto since we both were kids and we've always been exchanging a lot of ideas, suggestions, and code. Having someone to talk to is very important when you work on your own, as sometimes the solution to a problem is just around the corner, but you can't see it unless you look at it from the outside. Writing code together on the same machine is also a lot of fun and there's always something to learn, but we only did it a few times. We usually work on different parts of the source and share the results when they are done.
Ilona: Out of all the programs you have written, which one is the most special to you? And which one gave you a real hard time?
Alessandro: Tough question, I guess it's like asking a mother about her children :-) Each of my programs is special to me, and each of them gave me a hard time at least once. Some of them were more successful, and some contain pieces of code I'm especially proud of, but all in all I couldn't easily pick one out of the group. I obviously have to focus more on programs that receive more registrations, so the choice is really in the users' hands.
Ilona: How was your private life changed by your addiction to programming?
Alessandro: I can't tell how my life was changed because I've always been a programmer as far as I can remember, but I can say I really enjoy my work and it doesn't seem to ever get into my way. Being freelance is wonderful, although I recently worked for a large company and had a lot of fun there as well. In general, I spend an awful lot of time writing code and thinking about it, but my schedule is totally flexible so I can always choose to take an hour, a day or a week off whenever I feel like doing so (well... yes, I meant whenever my girlfriend feels like doing so).
Ilona: How do you feel about Windows and Linux?
Alessandro: I don't have any special positive or negative feelings about other OS's. I've been programming the Mac forever and I like it a lot, but I respect other people's opinions about their OS of choice. I could write software for other platforms if I had to (I've done it already at various times), but Mac users are a very nice group to deal with and they are usually very supportive.
Ilona: How do you feel about balancing the battle against piracy with the intrusiveness of Nag screens? When you first started releasing shareware, were you happy with the percentage of people who took the time to register?
Alessandro: I released my first utilities with no restrictions whatsoever and the results were not too bad, but not too encouraging either, then I switched to polite nag screens (with no feature limitations) and decided they were a good compromise. The software is fully usable even if the user chooses not to register, but it reminds him that there is a registration fee and provides an easy way to take care of the payment. I don't spend any time chasing hackers and pirates, I mainly try to help honest users who may otherwise forget about the payment.
Ilona: What new product/technology would you like to see from Apple within a year from now?
Alessandro: Hmmm. I think the latest bunch of iMac DV's and iBooks are pretty hot already, and of course I'm a big fan of USB. Including FireWire in the iMacs was a good move as well, but I've been using PowerBooks as my main machines ever since the Duo so it's hard for me to work on technologies that don't make it onto portable machines. All in all, I believe that Apple has done an excellent job since the first iMac came out and I hope they'll keep working in the same direction, driving down the prices and building fast machines with a distinctive character.
Ilona: Which sites do you surf regularly?
Alessandro: Version Tracker, MacCentral, MacInTouch, PowerPage, ResExcellence and MacWeek are among my favorites, but there are many more I frequently visit.
Ilona: What gave you the idea to make Icon Archiver? And how long did it take to finish it?
Alessandro: Years ago an Italian magazine asked me to write an icon utility, but I turned down the offer because their idea was too limited. I later had to write a new data storage engine from scratch, and realized I could use it to create a really good icon database instead of the useless stuff I had been asked for. I don't really know how much time I spent on the Archiver, but it did take a while, and of course I keep updating it whenever I can.
Ilona: Do you make your own icons for your own use as many of us do, maybe even for your programs? If yes, what application do you use? If not, may we know who has been designing the icons for your programs? Do you have a favorite icon artist?
Alessandro: I make my own (ugly) icons for my software, but I'm not much of an artist so I don't create any icons for other uses. Icons for software programs need to have some specific features that set them apart from artistic icons. They need to somehow suggest what the program does, they have to be visible on 4-bit and B&W screens, they can't have holes that would make them hard to click, they must have black borders in case they are moved to the desktop, and so forth... I use ResEdit to create them since non-custom icons are still limited to 256 colors and I don't really need any advanced graphics features. As for icon artists, I do download icons from time to time and I've seen both wonderful and ugly stuff, but I wouldn't be able to give you any specific names.
Ilona: What is your opinion about the new 32 bit icons and what difficulty do you face when updating, for instance Icon Archiver ,or designing an icon related program?
Alessandro: 32 bit icons are obviously very nice and very welcome. Updating the Icon Archiver was not an easy task because I wanted to keep the archive size as small and efficient as possible, but the previous compression method didn't work well with the increased pixel depth. I completely reengineered the file format and switched to a much more complex compression method to make the new archives as efficient with 32 bit icons as they used to be with traditional ones. Other than this the only issue with 32 bit icons is the one you all know about: the traditional BNDL resource didn't include 32 bit icons, so the only way to provide 32-bit icons for applications is to stick custom icons on them. One reason for this may be that 32-bit icons are really large, and including them in the desktop file would make it a whole lot bigger. If you don't include them in the desktop file then the only way to display the icon is to read it from the application file itself, which is exactly what happens with custom icons.
Ilona: What is your next project? - if you allowed to speak about it...
Alessandro: I am currently working a lot on all kinds of USB drivers both in shareware and for commercial products, but I also have nice plans for my other software including of course the Icon Archiver. I had several interesting suggestions from Icon Archiver users and I'll try to include as many as I can in the next release. In fact, it would be nice to set up a reader poll to see which features should be added first.
(Ilona comments: ResExcellence has a forum thread that will allow you to post your comments to Alessandro for the features you would like to request for the next version of Icon Archiver.)
Ilona: My dream is that one day, you'll design the ultimate icon editor! I have some crazy ideas... - that's the easy part of it. May we hope this will happen some time in the future?
Alessandro: It's an idea I've been considering ever since I wrote the Archiver, and it shouldn't be too hard to do, but it does require a lot of coding and a lot of user interface. I would love to include an editor in the Archiver, I just need to find some time to devote to it.
Ilona: What are you doing when not coding? Where do you like to see yourself in ten years?
Alessandro: I've been living with my girlfriend for about one year and we're still setting up our home, so we spend a lot of time discussing about it and working to make it nicer. I also like music, coffee, motorcycles, food, books, movies, and all kinds of technological gadgets. I love the wonderful weather and landscape of central Italy, so I guess that a nice country house in Tuscany is where I'd like to be in ten years.
Thanks, Alessandro, for being with us. I wish you a happy life!
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