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/////////////////// Andymon interview 2006
fractal.design: Age, Sex, Location
Andymon: I'm 30, Male, Germany -> Baden-Württemberg -> Stuttgart
fractal.design: Whats your favourite food, movie and thing (like "Feeding pigeons" or something other than LS)?
Andymon: Favourite Food: Typical German meal "Sauerkraut with Spätzle"
Favourite Films: No specific film, but I like the genres of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Action.
Favourite Music: Now and then Top100 Hits, Freestyle, EBM, Darkwave, Rock,
Vocal Trance, you can say I have my hand picked favourite's through all genres.
fractal.design: Do you have a fancy computer? Got the specs?
Andymon: I have the total opposite of a fancy computer
Just a simple working machine. Working, Programming, Browsing, Music and
some older games.
1200Mhz CPU, Radeon 9800 PRO (was a donation for xModules), ...
Nevertheless, as soon as there is enough money available on my bank
account I will buy a "normal" PC-System.
fractal.design: What animal would you like to be?
Andymon: Since I like cats ...
Some kind of big cat, tiger, panther, lion, ...
fractal.design: When and Why did you start using Litestep?
Andymon: Oh, that was so long ago, I can't remember exactly.
Litestep was version 0.2.4.5 alpha or something like that.
Probably in 1997/98 with my old Win95 PC. I stumbled upon Litestep by accident
and was totally enthusiastic about how it changed my default Windows.
But at this time it was very limited compared to now.
No Distros, OTS or anything else. Each theme was a complete Litestep, some even with the core included.
fractal.design: Why Litestep?
Andymon: Well, I started programming some simple GUI interfaces for some LS
modules for pure fun, then I thought about a Litestep Theme editor ->
LSTM was born.
Finally I started with fixing some xLabel problems (the "x" was
originally used by a guy named "X", who made the first modification to
label)
After that I recognized that small fixes and features aren't that complicated
and I started to add more and more features to xLabel and later followed all the other xModules.
fractal.design: Did you allready know how to code, or did you learn through coding modules for litestep?
Andymon: I had basic coding knowledge in some programming languages, but
I havn't really learned one of them. When I have started with xLabel
fixes I wasn't specialized in C++ or even Windows Interface/Shell Programming.
So you could say I'm learning by doing all the time.
fractal.design: How many years have you been coding Litestep modules?
Andymon: I started in January 2004, so now it's more then 2 years of hard work.
fractal.design: Which of your modules do you like the best? And what feature did you most enjoy coding?
Andymon: I like every single module I have created (but especially those which are still in development).
The best part of coding is to get a new feature finally working
fractal.design: What do you hope to see happen in the LS scene over the next couple of years?
Andymon: Atm, I hope the LS scene will get some new installers and the public interest it deserves.
fractal.design: Are you really pissed nobody in the LS community is giving you any cash?
Or are you sympathetic to the "geek student" profile of the typical LS themer?
Andymon: I'm not at all "pissed", since I am/was exactly the same leecher at
the start of my "career" as module coder. And I fully understand
people who don't have the money or don't want to donate for a "free" module.
Nevertheless I have spent alot of time in LS over the last 2 years,
and I'm grateful for every little thing I get back.
fractal.design: Does anyone in your family or friends use litestep? Do they understand what you spend so much time on?
Andymon: My family isn't very PC interested, so they just smile about my hobby.
Most of my friends use Litestep too, probably due to my advertisement.
fractal.design: What sort of themes do you like?
Andymon: I use normally my own very minimalistic themes, because I don't like too much features,
especially if you cannot remove/deactivate them easily.
fractal.design: Do you try out themes?
Andymon: In the last time I have my "default" theme. That might be,
because most of the newly released themes are too complicated for testing modules.
During Module development I need a small theme, where I can easily add/remove and modify parts quickly.
fractal.design: Does it get tiring reading so many feature requests?
Andymon: I think with xPaintClass and the current version of the xModules, the biggest part of feature request is over.
So I'll probably reduce work on the modules in general.
fractal.design: What happened with that whole "xStep" thing?
Andymon: Well, xStep was born, because the official LS development was
"abandoned" without any official notice for more then one year.
I started making a totally renewed base of the included core projects
and then I copied to 99% the original RC3 source (the latest available
at this point).
I cleaned the whole code and in my opinion the result was at least as
stable as the original RC3.
Then I have implemented the current libpng and zlib builds in the core
and a core version of settingsipc (a module which allows external
programs to access the core lsapi functions).
Later C00i90WN and Fallout "joined" the development, but actually we
havn't really finished NEW features, except my "xAbout Box".
At this point we decided to call xStep -> Litestep 0.25.0
Suddenly the official development team came back, finished RC4 and the
Final 0.24.7 (which made my core outdated).
Additionally we were informed that we aren't allowed to call our build
Litestep 0.25.0, since the name "Litestep" was owned by the official
development team.
At this point xStep was dead, the internal xStep core was outdated, the
official development was apparently restarted and there was no real use
of developing an additional core.
That's the whole story
fractal.design: Why don't you join the dev team?
Andymon:
1. I really don't know the core code very well
2. I have currently no real interest in coding the core
3. The few ideas of what could and should be in the core are (apparently)
totally incompatible between the dev team and me (or others).
4. They have never shown any interest in anything that I have developed .
(P. S.: The current discussion about the xPaintClass coordinate support for the core is such a thing.
It would only be a simple copy&paste job, since its totally backwards compatible to the old
core "ParseCoordinate", just an optional extra bool at the end)
5. They have never asked me.
But as final words:
I have no plans to join the dev team or make another core build on my own!
In fact, as long as Litestep lacks a more active community (In addition to the last active and
really great themer's :)) I probably won't code on any (x)module anymore.
It's useless, if only 20 people in the whole world actually make use of it (nearly no new themes these days).
Best regards
Andymon
LS-Universe Team
www.ls-universe.info
12:25 pm (3 years ago)
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