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"Look, the tramp has a laptop!" A sentence that I heard dozens of times during the 3 years, that I slept at the Place d'Armes in the plain center of
Luxembourg-City. People have to fit into a predefined box (at least in my country) and tramps are supposed to hang around drinking beer and wine, bugging
everyone, making noise and dirt, anyway, doing nothing, that is considered to be done by "normal people" only and seeing me every day with my PC — that
was a little bit as meeting an alien, who's all green with huge antennas sticking out of his head. Pictures were taken, photos of me (with highly intelligent
comments) appeared on the Internet and even in some newspapers. Lots of people were jealous (a national disease), most of them really thought, that homeless
in Luxembourg have plenty of money, the others couldn't understand, why I spent a major part of my dough to buy computer stuff. "Weird! But cool!", I often
was called by people from overseas and with the bill, they gave me, I could buy bread, butter and cheese, take a shower at the public bath, have lunch once
a week at the station buffet or save money for a new 2TB backup or music and video disk…
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This little story is more than significant to describe myself and my actual life. My name is Aly Lutgen; it is from its first letters, that derives "allu",
the shortcut, that I use to sign my programs and articles. I'm a homeless guy, born in the north of Luxembourg during the time, where this country still
was some kind of paradise, living in the street since 2009, partially as a choice, partially as the consequence of how our social services are (dys)functioning.
Getting my first computer (a TRS-80 Level II) when I was 16, I began to teach myself programming, BASIC first, then Turbo Pascal, later creating dynamic Web
sites with databases using Perl-CGI and MySQL. It's only since 2016/2017, that I started developing (MS Windows) GUI applications, choosing Lazarus/Free Pascal
as programming language. Becoming a SDF ("sans domicile fixe", as homeless people are called here) didn't affect my interest and pleasure in informatics. It is
probably (very) rare, that a tramp passes his day by writing computer programs (and watching movies, before laying down into his sleeping bag), but there is no
reason, that living in the street may not be living some form of "normal life". "Le clochard au laptop" (the tramp with the laptop),
I'm sometimes called. And I think that's exactly what I am!
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