About the French guy
First of all, I would notice something. I am absolutly sure that this guy is a programmer. As you can see he programmed the cake, not cooked it. Also he (except his girl) is the only person that talks about "sampling" of something. Actualy, it means that he can even programe himself.
Now let's talk about his programmes. He keeps his works with him. Even his earlier works like the vampires. And they're obviously useful for keeping newer programes (the keyer) in safe place.
Of course, his most famous programme is the programme upon the Matrix is based on. I guess. No one else could create such a programme. It is obvious that he knows a lot about human profile as he made such effect with programmed cake. He is also connection beetwen this programme and Oracle, as it looks that he created Oracle too. I first thought of this because it sounded logical to me, now I've also read about the game where Oracle said that he changed her because he was angry. This would be easy explanation.
Why I think this way? Since architect did not create human code for the Matrix, we can be pretty sure that that work was human engineered. So it could be the work of this French guy (suppose that he is human). With doing such work he achieved such power that he errr... could have fun and machines had to accept it as they didn't have any choice. It is possible that he put some code that could be hope for humankind in the Matrix (like Oracle) and that was the reason girl fell in love with him. Could be that he also saved first man from the Matrix. But later he switched to dark side. It is possible that he was disappointed with humankind, or he just fell in love with himself too much.