Interview with Antonio Linares

In this new interview I contacted Antonio Linares, one of the starters of the Harbour project and developer of the Fivewin library, one of the most popular GUI for Harbour.

Explain a little your bio, where you live and what you do professionally.

I was born 55 years ago in Malaga. One day a ZX81 computer came into my hands, I connected it to the TV, I wrote “hello” and was fascinated looking at those letters on the screen. It was magical. From there the curiosity and the synchronies of life, did the rest. My hobby became my profession. An immense gift of life.

For those who do not know you, tell us your relationship with the Harbor community. How do you participate and what do you think of it?

Basically I’m Harbour’s dad. I lied to put the seed and this became a huge tree with many branches. Another blessing of life. We are very fortunate to have been able to build it all.

How did you start at Harbor and when did you decide to use it professionally?

I wanted to understand how Clipper worked. I did not decide anything, just things happened. I read several compiler building books, I started to test and shared the results publicly. Many people became enthusiastic and began to help. And so begins the Harbor project.

What kind of software do you do? What development do you feel most proud of? Can you send us a glimpse of your development?

FiveWin without a doubt. It has made me known to many great friends around the world, has made me travel, has allowed me a lot of time for myself and it continues to pay my bills :-)

Do you use any GUI in your developments? Which one of them ?

FiveWin for Windows. On Mac I use FiveMac. And in Android and iOS use QT or directly the GUI own those platforms.

Tell us what your development environment is and what programming tools you use.

Total Commander as a file manager. Fivedit as source code editor. Visual Studio to debug at low level.

What do you miss in Harbour or in our community? What would you like Harbour to have?

I find it great as it is. It will incorporate what is necessary and evolve thanks to the community.

Do you know any other programming environments besides Harbor? What kind of developments have you done in other environments?

All are very similar but with Harbour I can do what I want very quickly. It’s Clipper’s magic: he made us all professional programmers while we played with him :-)