We broke Tyler Dauwalder away from his long discussions with the other attendees for a brief chat about his experience at WalterCon 2004. Read on for the scoop...

How do you feel about WalterCon now that you've survived the first one?
It was fun. It was good to get people together like this.

How much has your confidence been boosted, now that you've met some of the key players in this little drama face to face? :)
Ummmmm, let's just say it was cool to actually meet people involved and/or interested in everything. It's good to know there are real people out there pulling for the project to succeed. It's easy to feel distanced from all that with only electronic contact.

A key issue lately has been binary-compatibility. How has Haiku stuck to that goal, and are there any real hurdles left to address?
I personally don't see where the worry about binary-compatibility comes from. I've been pretty well convinced for quite a while that we'll pull it off, and I have yet to see any convincing evidence otherwise.

I don't personally know of any real hurdles that remain wrt binary compatibility. But I don't claim to have the definitive answer on that either.

What does having Java working on Haiku mean to you, if you would view it through the eyes of a normal user?
I think it's a pretty damn cool achievement. There are a lot useful java apps out there. I would argue that the Java name itself a great thing to have, too.

Java's always been such a buzzwordy thing, having Java on Haiku lends it a certain amount of credibility. And while a lot of us don't need Java to convince us BeOS and/or Haiku are great OSes, any good attention we can draw is just that: good attention.

Plus, it looks to me like we're gonna have a pretty damn good Java implementation when all is said and done, and that's just cool all around. :-)

Can you tell me more about the Dictionary Kit?
Not really. :-) I think it's a good idea. Making it easy for spell check to be included in apps, as well as accessible in an easy manner from standard controls, is a great idea. I think it should and will happen. At some point. Who knows when.

If you could give one piece of advice to a new Haiku developer, what would it be?
Be as self-motivated as you possibly can. That means:

1. Be prepared to do as much as you can on your own: researching solutions to problems, assessing what needs to be done, etc.


2. Don't be afraid to speak up if you've got a problem or question that you're stuck on and really need help with. We're all happy to help, particularly if you've put out the effort to solve your problems on your own.


3. It's easy to say you want to help, but much harder to actually get something done. The best way to get started is to ask one of the team leads for a good starter task and then to go complete the task. We don't have time to hound every possible developer out there about what they might want to do, so you need to hound us. :-)


Regardless, we'd love any help we can get. Just let us know what you can do and what you're interested in. :-)

Thanks Tyler.
You're welcome. :-)