My name is Benoit Sigoure (aka tsuna), I'm a Computer Software
engineer (resume) and a Free Software developer.  I spend most
of time programming (C++ and OCaml are my favorite languages,
I'm also fond of Perl).  I believe in the value of Free Software,
and I like communities of developers involved.  It's one of the
rare place where you get a chance to learn a lot and work with
knowledgeable people striving for quality.  Many Free software
projects are known for their very high coding standards.  I think
it's extremely rare to find such communities of developers in
companies.  Which is odd, since that's where people are paid to
Do the Things Right.  I have yet to see a company with a workflow,
code base and contributors such as that of Git, for instance.
I found Google!

Anyways, back to me.  First off, I'm obviously not good at designing
GUIs (as you could guess from this page).  My domains of interest are
primarily R&D in Programming Languages, Compilation Theory, Type
Systems, Program Transformation, Static Analysis.  I recently
developed an interest in image processing, especially on probabilistic
methods (such as Markov fields).  Speech processing also interests me
because it involves similar methods.  I also like system (low level)
programming and OS implementation details (schedulers, memory manager,
this sort of things).

I like:
  - Free software (I'm not a GNU extremist, I'm OK with other Open
    licenses, but I tend to promote the GPL or LGPL).
  - (Strongly) typed programming languages.  Interpreted languages
    such as Perl, Ruby, Python or, worse, PHP, tend to unnerve me
    because they almost systematically lead to unreliable code, even
    though they also have other advantages.
  - To tackle interesting R&D challenges.  For this reason,
    programming websites, for example, is something I tend to find
    utterly boring and uninteresting.  Implementing clever algorithms
    or methods discussed in scientific papers is much more fun.

I don't like / hate:
  - Closed source systems that don't do what I need.  OSX (and more
    generally speaking Apple products) doesn't count here, because
    even though it's proprietary software, I find this OS superior
    to other existing OSes *for a laptop*.  In particular, it's a lot
    better than GNU/Linux, sadly.  At least, that's my opinion.  Once
    GNU/Linux catches up on OSX, I'll switch back to this OS.
  - SVN is definitely a bad SCM, it's sad that it's so much widespread.
    I don't recommend it and I don't like it (I used to, though).
  - Windows and, more generally speaking most Microsoft products, is
    definitely something I try to avoid as much as possible.  I care
    about Windows portability, even though it's a pain in the ass, but
    I find it utterly painful to work with this OS and Microsoft stuff.

Many more things could be said / listed here, but if you're not yet
bored, you can still reach me by mail at
  <tsunanet at ... gmail dot com>

Back