Gian Perrone
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IRC nicks: |
gian, Gi-Gi (!!!), Kasugai |
Personal web site: |
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E-mail address: |
<gian AT SPAMFREE expdev DOT net> |
How were you involved with TPU?
I joined TPU a few years after its inception, as a rather precocious tween. I quickly discovered #tpu, and essentially ended up growing up among the crazy antics of the various TPUers of the time. The phrase "loss of innocence" comes to mind. Towards the end of TPU, I ended up variously as an admin (whatever that means - I basically just irritated AdamC until he got sick of saying no), and later ended up running one incarnation of the web presence, which I had hacked together. With the crowd of regulars gone, TPU was really no fun anymore. I replaced the forums I had setup with a small static site and a mailing list (the lowest-volume list known to man), and that was basically the end.
How about a capsule summary of the programming you did in your TPU years?
I had the attention span of a goldfish in those days (I still do, to some degree). I started coding a million different things, but rarely would I finish anything. I tried my hand at programming games, IRC bots, super-duper content management systems, compilers, operating systems and produced thousands of lines of code which will probably never see the light of day ever again. Adam's influence got me into functional programming and I started a number of toy projects in languages like Scheme and ML. I was always coding something...
What are you up to now professionally and/or academically?
I'm completing the final year of a Bachelor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Waikato University in New Zealand. My interest in programming languages eventually led me to drift along into work on concurrency, and this has led further to the development of programmatic (and semi-formal) methods of using semantic information derived at compile time to facilitate efficient concurrent execution of programs.
I'm also working for an IT company doing large-scale e-commerce back-ends and stock management programs, which occasionally allows me to apply my research interests.
What are your favorite programming languages and tools today?
I still dabble occasionally with ML and Haskell, but my work means I most commonly use Java, which is fine with me. I've become involved in the use of a lot of hilarious buzzword technologies, like SOAs and Web Services. My life is so Dilbert.
What sorts of software are you most often developing lately?
The aforementioned compiler and execution framework which does concurrency stuff, as well as the various business software which I'm paid to write.