Photo by Brian Tao.

Before the Web existed, Zoltan “Du Lac” Hawryluk originally had a short career writing calligraphy on cards, scrolls and diplomas for beer money in university. He also worked with children with behavioural problems, assisted teaching a grade 5 class and instructed Computer Studies classes at a Toronto community college, with goal of entering teacher’s college after receiving his BSc in Computer Science and Mathematics. However, during his final year in university, the World Wide Web was just starting to catch on (to give some context, the first web browser he ever used was Lynx), so he decided to give programming web applications a try. He still loves it to this day and has made a pretty rewarding career out of it. While he does like server side programming (using C, Perl, PHP and Java), he prefers front-end development, with a focus on web standards, accessibility, usability and cross-browser (and cross-device) compatibility.

Because of his previous flirting in the education field, he loves to share information and is always interested to hear what others are doing in the world of web development.  He is also in love with C and Unix shell programming, especially under the Linux operating system (Ubuntu in particular) and Cygwin (so he can share his code with those who have drunk the Microsoft Kool-Aid).  He also loves using Free Software, and would rather use the GIMP rather than Photoshop so he can share his knowledge without having someone spend a lot of money in order to use it.

When he’s not hacking out code, he has been known to sing/grunt in the lounge-punk band Conflicting Plaid (his grandmother has still not heard any of his performances and would like to keep it that way).  He is also known to help  friends and family get viruses off their PCs, and often has a few random computers in his den, much to his wife’s chagrin.

For more random information about Zoltan, please read the infamous Zoltan FAQ.