Interview with Dmitry Honest

Friends, thank you very much for welcoming reaction to the idea of ​​an interview. We decided to keep heading and try to make it weekly. Today we offer you a conversation with Dmitri Honest. He is the developer of BlogJet blog client for Windows. Dmitry has recently introduced a program Mémoires (cm. our overview) - this is his first attempt to enter the Mac-software market (except Mahalo widget). Mémoires has received rave reviews from John Gruber and TUAW. We talked as a purely "svitcherskie" theme, and about the peculiarities of the transition from Win-programming.

When you have got the first Mac? What were your first impressions?
The first Mac I bought in April 2005 - it was a 12 "iBook G4 (it and now I have, it is the laptop for travel). To quote a note from your blog:

"Missing in Mac, I will be back soon.

No, I have not abandoned my blog - I just bought Apple iBook :)

The situation is similar to the appearance in our house the first color television when he was taken, I was a week did not go out of the house (then were in school holidays) and all day watching TV. "

It is known that you have the latest version of Blogjet been developed only for Macbook Pro via Parallels. We also know that you are working on a "super secret» shareware-development for Mac OS X. :) How difficult was the transition from Win-programming? Were there any rakes? And where it is easier to create software?

The transition was very difficult. I began to study the Cocoa programming in 2005, but then abandoned the case. First, I had to continue to develop the Windows-products, and secondly, it seemed to me that I did not have enough patience. I have programmed in many frameworks - Delphi, .NET, wxWidgets, and everywhere I needed less month "to be cut", because, in principle, they are all alike - all about the same API and ideology. Cocoa same, although there before these frameworks, using different principles. And I'm talking about the framework, the because learning a new language (Objective-C) for normal programmers - not a problem (and in addition, under the Cocoa and you can write in Ruby, and Python).

And yet, at the beginning of 2007, I decided to study how to Cocoa. From the beginning to the moment when the light bulb above his head caught fire, and I understood the essence, gone somewhere for two months. Then there was all easier - read docks and write code.

Well, after I realized that Cocoa - this is the most brilliant GUI framework. Sometimes, reading about another function, I shouted «Wow!» - so everything is nicely done there. In some cases, to achieve what Cocoa-programmer receives default, Windows-programmer will write a few weeks.

What would you have identified three of the strongest quality of Mac OS X?

I will abandon all the usual "easy to use", "beauty", "security", etc., because it all and so it is known. I come up with something original:

• UNIX. I've used Linux since 1998. However, neither Linux not stand I have more than three months :-) So I'm not Linux users. But the beauty of UNIX understand. But the most important thing is that all the tools are already there - PHP, Ruby, Python, Apache, etc. (Well, if you do not need them, you will not notice them.)
• Availability of excellent programs. The main argument of Windows-users - something that few programs on the Mac. Yeah, for Windows there are millions (or billions?), But what... If I were a kind of MacLeod, he would have to rewrite all that there is for Windows (except Skype, BlogJet and iTunes). If I were president, I would have canceled the moratorium on the death penalty, but only for Windows-based programmers. Over the past 5 years on Windows, I move from one email client to another, and no one I did not like. Same with browsers. On the photo archive. IM. Calendar. On a Mac, I safely use Mail, Safari, iPhoto, Adium, iCal, etc. This cute, but not the program.
• Shortcuts. On the Mac many "sensitive" keys - Control, Option, Command, Shift, Enter, Return (yes, they are two different keys). At first I thought they were stupid - why so many buttons? Now I understand. I've never been good at Mortal Combat, but on the Mac as much useful "combo" that - is to memorize them - you can never touch the mouse.

I know that some fans are buying up almost all of the Apple- laptops and desktops, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, etc. How much do you have Apple products?

• MacBook Pro 17 "Core 2 Duo 2.33 GHz, 2 GB RAM
• iBook 12 "PowerPC G4 1.2 GHz, 512 MB RAM
• iPod Shuffle (2nd generation)
• Mighty Mouse
• Apple Keyboard
• AirPort Express

Coding Robots released a beta version of Mémoires, an excellent program for your personal blog. You first tried to sell it, and then made free. blog recently you consulted with users about Mémoires future. Do you think I make more difficult shareware-developer of Mac-software?

I think it is easier. Firstly, the market is not so filled, for Windows, and therefore easier to break. Second, the Mac-users pay for the software (not all of course, but I think the percentage of piracy less). Third, users often keep upgrading OSes. Vista, of course, an extreme example, but still - what percentage of users it has passed? And some still sitting on Windows 95!

About Mémoires, incidentally, the story was. I wrote a big secret project. A little tired of his program and decided to "relax" - for one night to write a program for keeping a diary. And I got it (Cocoa rulez). The next day I polished it, and when I was in Germany, posted on the website, make a page for preorder (true preordery were actually a simple subscription to the newsletter of the output). But I did not tell anyone other than Twitter contacts, because he was not sure whether it is worth it to develop further. Then he decided to write the next big secret project, and Mémoires release into free-swimming as freeware. Not a bit of it. The program is written about giants Daring Fireball and TUAW, the first couple of days was 6,000 downloads, started coming feature requests, bug reports. I decided to develop it further and put a big secret project. Naturally, it is necessary for something to live, so ask the user if they would mind if I make it paid. So far, only one said he did not pay (and did not understand why we have released a product that already has two), the rest are not opposed.

There are no plans to move Blogjet on Mac? Still, some things you do better than your competitors (primarily loading images)

To be honest, I'm tired of programming blog clients. It's not in the sense that I will not continue to produce BlogJet or that our company will not release a mobile BlogJet :), and the fact that it is really difficult. It is difficult to make the client when you are not in control of the server, and when the API specifications are written so that they can be interpreted as anything. As a result, when someone from WordPress or Six Apart something namudrili in the code, we will hear and bug reports. And we do something we can not do anything, the problem is server-side ...

Is there a program for which you could recommend to pay attention switcher?

All that is in Mac OS X, plus Adium, Colloquy, Cyberduck and TextMate. Well, the Parallels, if there is something very necessary / enterprise that does not work on Mac OS X. Plus codecs Perian and Flip4Mac.

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Thanks to Dmitry for interesting conversation and success to his "Makovsky» shareware-market. :)

And now, some of the plans. I think in future interviews should move away from svitcherskih porasprashivat issues and about how well-known in their field professionals use "maki" in their work. What do you think?