Community Interview: Arantor
Today we have @Arantor 's interview. He is our beloved Premium Member and posts interesting views on subjects around the forum. I hope you will all enjoy to read his interview as much as I did. I'm glad to have him on board and I know you will also appreciate his opinion on certain subjects.
Hello! Thank you for accepting my interview request. Can you tell me and the community more about yourself? Who are you, what's your age, gender, where are you from ?
Hi, thanks for inviting me!
I'm Pete but mostly better known as Arantor, male, 39, from the south of the United Kingdom. By day, I work for a web design agency mostly doing e-commerce. By night, well, any and all things are possible.
How did you become a developer ?
Many of my school friends had a console growing up but we had a ZX Spectrum.
It's a little black box, barely the size of an iPad, with 40 grey rubber keys on it. You plugged in the TV, plugged in a tape recorder and waited 5 minutes for games to load. Colour, sound, everything you want in a game.
But more importantly was when I found out that I could *make things* on it. Pretty much all the home computers of the day came with a simple programming language called BASIC. It usually wasn't fast, but you could *do* things with it - and you could get books of games where they had the code to type in, so you could see how things worked, and what you could change, like changing graphics or sound, and I was hooked. I've been making things ever since, and it's been over 30 years.
What is your greatest strength being a developer ?
Being able to say "I don't know how to do it - not yet, but I'll figure it out." It might not end up being the nicest way but it'll work. Mostly stubbornness, I guess.
What is your greatest accomplishment ?
I suppose that mostly comes down to what 'greatest' means. I've had a pretty varied career in web development, and I've been lucky to have had opportunities working with seriously interesting people - over the years I've built things used by organisations like Microsoft, Adobe, the United Nations and Doctors Without Borders.
But I think if I'm actually honest, those things look nice on a resume, but I'm not sure they were the *greatest*. I think that actually rests with the many, many hours spent with SMF forums, helping people, helping them bring others together in communities, building and supporting the tools that connect people.
How long have you been on forums in general? What's the history behind you?
I've been on forums since I started to have regular internet access at the end of the 1990s. I was interested in Amiga emulation - it was still pretty new at the time - and found a number of forums to discuss getting things working, various ways to do it and improve it.
First time I actually started running a forum was 2006, when a piece of software I'd been using had fallen by the wayside and I started trying to build a spiritual successor, and the forum was a place for discussion and project management.
Would you ever develop your own forum software ?
That's an interesting question. Bit of history first...
In 2010, SMF was going through some drama and several forks emerged, of which probably the most ambitious was Wedge, developed by myself and a guy known as Nao. We poured about 3 years into it, doing a lot of very cool things along the way, before personality clashes just meant I couldn't do it any more.
Then there was StoryBB, which started out as a fork of SMF in 2017, though the aim was to build out roleplay tools - starting with a very strong implementation of 'subaccounts', and ended up with a major modernisation refit, but the project flailed by early 2022 because I just wasn't getting interest from the sorts of people it was aimed at.
Would I develop my own? I kinda did. Would I develop a new one? And the answer is, I don't know.
What could I do that is sufficiently different from existing platforms, whilst appealing to/being useful to enough people - all to justify the time and effort? In hindsight, Wedge didn't meet enough of the former while being fine on the latter, StoryBB did enough of the former but not enough of the latter. Need to find that balance.
There's not much value in building another of the same when we already *have* the options we have. So the question will be if I can think of something different that solves the problems we know we have.
What add ons do you plan to release in the future?
That depends a lot on what people want and whether some of the things have been done before. In the case of XF I'm really waiting to see what 2.3 brings before making any serious decisions because while I have some ideas, I don't want to be undermined if an official competitor happens, and I really need to check out what some of the other big add-on authors are doing.
I've thought about adding a games area, e.g. for forum members to play chess, draughts/checkers, etc. against each other and share the results/allow spectators and so on. But I don't know if the interest is there to justify the time.
Do you ever consider to make your own community forum about some niche you like? What niche is that and how would you handle it ? And which software would you choose for what reason?
I've thought about it again. I'm a huge fan of the point 'n' click adventure game genre, like the Monkey Island series, or more recent games such as those by Wadjet Eye or Grundislav Games, and I think there's room for another community site, and I've been thinking about that a lot lately.
My professional work had a major project over the summer/autumn which took up all my headspace, and it's only been over the Christmas break that I'm coming back to any of it. My main question is finding the right tone between being a soap box blog of my thoughts on the genre, and being a community forum - but I'm not sure which one I prefer yet: it falls into that weird space between a forum and a blog: blogs are few-to-many publications, forums are many-to-many, and I sort of need something in the middle.
How much hours do you develop daily or weekly ?
Professionally I'll put in around 40/week for the day job. But it's not uncommon for me to drop another 15-20 per week on hobby projects (on top of keeping up with forums/Discord/social venues)
What's your preferred language ?
For web things, PHP. For more console/server things, probably Python. On the rare occasion I'm playing with desktop-only development, PureBasic has become my goto. I avoid mobile if I can help it.
Do you consider yourself an expert developer? Are there aspects that you'd like to know better ?
Well, I'm coming up on 20 years of PHP next March, so there's certainly a lot of hours invested, what it does, how it does it - but the reality is that everything evolves. The languages, how we use them, design patterns and their applications, all evolved.
That's really the thing, there's always something new to learn - anyone I ever thought of an expert only knows too well what they don't know and what is changing.
Do you enjoy solving bugs that might occur on your add-ons?
I like the satisfaction of squishing them for sure. But I don't like there being bugs, especially ones that are ultimately the 'Doh! Should have thought of that!' moments.
What are some of your latest designs ?
I think I posted the last design I was working on, a purple theme based on images from the JW telescope with a stylised border around it. I don't really have any good screenshots of the other design I've been working on for a roleplay site. One current fashion in RP land is to have a screen-high header area that you scroll down, like a fake landing page, and I haven't yet adapted that on other pages, so no good screenshots yet.
What do you recommend a starting forum owner?
I think I'd recommend 3 things to any starting forum owner.
1. Be patient. Communities are like a forest, you have to plant the seeds, nurture them, and keep doing that while they gradually begin to grow.
2. You are the admin. Your space, your house, your rules. Don't be afraid to show someone the door if they're stomping round your space with their muddy boots on, so to speak.
3. Trust your instincts. If someone makes you as an admin feel uncomfortable, chances are they make others (who have less power) feel more uncomfortable. Say something, do something.
Hopefully that's interesting
Today we have @Arantor 's interview. He is our beloved Premium Member and posts interesting views on subjects around the forum. I hope you will all enjoy to read his interview as much as I did. I'm glad to have him on board and I know you will also appreciate his opinion on certain subjects.
Hello! Thank you for accepting my interview request. Can you tell me and the community more about yourself? Who are you, what's your age, gender, where are you from ?
Hi, thanks for inviting me!
I'm Pete but mostly better known as Arantor, male, 39, from the south of the United Kingdom. By day, I work for a web design agency mostly doing e-commerce. By night, well, any and all things are possible.
How did you become a developer ?
Many of my school friends had a console growing up but we had a ZX Spectrum.
It's a little black box, barely the size of an iPad, with 40 grey rubber keys on it. You plugged in the TV, plugged in a tape recorder and waited 5 minutes for games to load. Colour, sound, everything you want in a game.
But more importantly was when I found out that I could *make things* on it. Pretty much all the home computers of the day came with a simple programming language called BASIC. It usually wasn't fast, but you could *do* things with it - and you could get books of games where they had the code to type in, so you could see how things worked, and what you could change, like changing graphics or sound, and I was hooked. I've been making things ever since, and it's been over 30 years.
What is your greatest strength being a developer ?
Being able to say "I don't know how to do it - not yet, but I'll figure it out." It might not end up being the nicest way but it'll work. Mostly stubbornness, I guess.
What is your greatest accomplishment ?
I suppose that mostly comes down to what 'greatest' means. I've had a pretty varied career in web development, and I've been lucky to have had opportunities working with seriously interesting people - over the years I've built things used by organisations like Microsoft, Adobe, the United Nations and Doctors Without Borders.
But I think if I'm actually honest, those things look nice on a resume, but I'm not sure they were the *greatest*. I think that actually rests with the many, many hours spent with SMF forums, helping people, helping them bring others together in communities, building and supporting the tools that connect people.
How long have you been on forums in general? What's the history behind you?
I've been on forums since I started to have regular internet access at the end of the 1990s. I was interested in Amiga emulation - it was still pretty new at the time - and found a number of forums to discuss getting things working, various ways to do it and improve it.
First time I actually started running a forum was 2006, when a piece of software I'd been using had fallen by the wayside and I started trying to build a spiritual successor, and the forum was a place for discussion and project management.
Would you ever develop your own forum software ?
That's an interesting question. Bit of history first...
In 2010, SMF was going through some drama and several forks emerged, of which probably the most ambitious was Wedge, developed by myself and a guy known as Nao. We poured about 3 years into it, doing a lot of very cool things along the way, before personality clashes just meant I couldn't do it any more.
Then there was StoryBB, which started out as a fork of SMF in 2017, though the aim was to build out roleplay tools - starting with a very strong implementation of 'subaccounts', and ended up with a major modernisation refit, but the project flailed by early 2022 because I just wasn't getting interest from the sorts of people it was aimed at.
Would I develop my own? I kinda did. Would I develop a new one? And the answer is, I don't know.
What could I do that is sufficiently different from existing platforms, whilst appealing to/being useful to enough people - all to justify the time and effort? In hindsight, Wedge didn't meet enough of the former while being fine on the latter, StoryBB did enough of the former but not enough of the latter. Need to find that balance.
There's not much value in building another of the same when we already *have* the options we have. So the question will be if I can think of something different that solves the problems we know we have.
What add ons do you plan to release in the future?
That depends a lot on what people want and whether some of the things have been done before. In the case of XF I'm really waiting to see what 2.3 brings before making any serious decisions because while I have some ideas, I don't want to be undermined if an official competitor happens, and I really need to check out what some of the other big add-on authors are doing.
I've thought about adding a games area, e.g. for forum members to play chess, draughts/checkers, etc. against each other and share the results/allow spectators and so on. But I don't know if the interest is there to justify the time.
Do you ever consider to make your own community forum about some niche you like? What niche is that and how would you handle it ? And which software would you choose for what reason?
I've thought about it again. I'm a huge fan of the point 'n' click adventure game genre, like the Monkey Island series, or more recent games such as those by Wadjet Eye or Grundislav Games, and I think there's room for another community site, and I've been thinking about that a lot lately.
My professional work had a major project over the summer/autumn which took up all my headspace, and it's only been over the Christmas break that I'm coming back to any of it. My main question is finding the right tone between being a soap box blog of my thoughts on the genre, and being a community forum - but I'm not sure which one I prefer yet: it falls into that weird space between a forum and a blog: blogs are few-to-many publications, forums are many-to-many, and I sort of need something in the middle.
How much hours do you develop daily or weekly ?
Professionally I'll put in around 40/week for the day job. But it's not uncommon for me to drop another 15-20 per week on hobby projects (on top of keeping up with forums/Discord/social venues)
What's your preferred language ?
For web things, PHP. For more console/server things, probably Python. On the rare occasion I'm playing with desktop-only development, PureBasic has become my goto. I avoid mobile if I can help it.
Do you consider yourself an expert developer? Are there aspects that you'd like to know better ?
Well, I'm coming up on 20 years of PHP next March, so there's certainly a lot of hours invested, what it does, how it does it - but the reality is that everything evolves. The languages, how we use them, design patterns and their applications, all evolved.
That's really the thing, there's always something new to learn - anyone I ever thought of an expert only knows too well what they don't know and what is changing.
Do you enjoy solving bugs that might occur on your add-ons?
I like the satisfaction of squishing them for sure. But I don't like there being bugs, especially ones that are ultimately the 'Doh! Should have thought of that!' moments.
What are some of your latest designs ?
I think I posted the last design I was working on, a purple theme based on images from the JW telescope with a stylised border around it. I don't really have any good screenshots of the other design I've been working on for a roleplay site. One current fashion in RP land is to have a screen-high header area that you scroll down, like a fake landing page, and I haven't yet adapted that on other pages, so no good screenshots yet.
What do you recommend a starting forum owner?
I think I'd recommend 3 things to any starting forum owner.
1. Be patient. Communities are like a forest, you have to plant the seeds, nurture them, and keep doing that while they gradually begin to grow.
2. You are the admin. Your space, your house, your rules. Don't be afraid to show someone the door if they're stomping round your space with their muddy boots on, so to speak.
3. Trust your instincts. If someone makes you as an admin feel uncomfortable, chances are they make others (who have less power) feel more uncomfortable. Say something, do something.
Hopefully that's interesting
