Danny Thorpe message for the Delphi Community

Post taken from the delphi.non-technical newsgroups. I'm including the text in order to avoid confusions, if you want to see the real text, go to the google newsgroups, it should show up there.


"
Members of the Delphi Community,


As you've no doubt read in other threads in this newsgroup, I have left
Borland to seek new opportunities at Google.

This was not a sudden action. I have tried my best to ensure a smooth
transition for the Delphi team, starting with transition plan
discussions with Borland management more than nine months ago.

Delphi is built by a team, not by any individual. Far greater talent
than mine has come and gone from the team, and Delphi presses on. More
importantly, far greater talent remains in the team, some of it as yet
untapped.

As you may know, my philosphy is that teams should be built to
anticipate, tolerate, and support the comings and goings of individuals
on the team. Everyone will eventually leave the team - either by
choice, or by pine box. To ignore this is childish.

I have full confidence in the Delphi team to continue to deliver the
right stuff to keep Delphi current, innovative, and competitive for
years to come. Though there have been some difficult spots between
myself and Borland corporate management, the internal changes in
attitude and messaging in recent months from Borland corporate toward
Delphi have turned my faith in Borland supporting Delphi back toward
the positive. I'm sure that will only get better as Todd Neilsen
steps in as the new CEO.

I'm also pleased that in some small measure my departure is creating
opportunities for advancement within the Delphi team, and that Borland
management (Boz and Steve Todd) was very supportive of "redrawing the
map" under the guidance of Allen, Michael, Eli, and myself. Several
individuals on the team have been promoted in title and/or in pay as a
result of this change. Many of those have not seen promotion or pay
raises for as long as 5 years. Borland has also committed to opening up
several new positions in the Delphi group in Scotts Valley, which may
be filled with entry or mid level engineering talent. This alone is a
significant reversal of the "No new hires in Scotts Valley" edict
earlier this year by then-CEO Dale Fuller.

I was not snatched away from Borland, and I am not leaving Borland for
lack of money. I sought out Google, and I'll be making at Google
exactly what I made at Borland, which is nicely comfortable but not
excessive. There were other suitors (including the obvious one) but,
quite frankly, Google outmaneuvered them.

Could Borland have bought me back? No, because I didn't leave for
money. Why, then? Opportunity. I'm going to Google to pursue ideas
and opportunities that are simply beyond Borland. I love Delphi, I
know it inside out, but there's a lot more in me than just Delphi.

After 15 exciting years doing a wide variety of things at Borland, it's
time for me to do something /completely/ different.

This is not goodbye. This is just changing channels.

-Danny Thorpe
Engineer, Google.
"

Thanks Danny, your legacy on our amazing development tool will never be forgotten. May the force be with you in your new ventures.


Nos vemos pronto.

Danny Thorpe left Borland.

In my opinion one of the smartest guys i have the honor to met, it was on a great developer's three day conference in Toronto where i got the pleasure to listen and share some time with the guy behind the latest improvements on the Delphi compiler.

After 15 years (some people say 20 :P) of working with Borland he is leaving for a new great adventure in Google, helping on the development of lots of new things related to FireFox. Before leaving, he gave the Delphi community a last gift, by helping to provide one of the strongest Delphi versions ever. Delphi 2006.

Borland, the Delphi team and the Delphi community for sure will miss him, i'm happy to know that for a couple of months now, new people is already taking his place. New minds working on the progress of the language, environment, etc that we love so much. In my opinion, the future looks very bright, we have a roadmap, we have a strong Delphi version and we have the chance of fresh ideas coming into Delphi.

Thanks Danny, you are 'Da Man. Enjoy your new venture and keep in touch with the community.

Long nights of development...

Lately i have being a bit unplug from my blogging duties.

The reason, a big personal project i'm trying to pull out. Just for fun, let me extend a bit into it.

It is developed in WIN32 using DataSnap, Indy, the Quantum Express Grid and JVL/JVCL. No other component is allowed :) (well, i need some sound recording, so, im looking for some replacement to the MMTOOLS, if you guys know of any, please let me know).

My Datasnap modules on this occassion sit on Transactional Data Modules on MTS, using Free threading. My previous experiences with it have return amazing performance advantages of using connection and object pooling in coordination with a good load balancing and redundancy techniques thanx to the DataSnap built in load balancer.

Initially i tried to use a very good ntier framework called KbMw, but the learning curve and my short time to bring this project alive stopped me from doing it (once it is up and running i will try to port the project to it).

The Quantum Grid is just amazing, i haven't even scratch the surface of these components and i'm already shocked with the possibilities, if you guys have the budget, go and get them. They support VCL.Net and i'm waiting to see its Express bars working on VCL.Net too.

I still haven't decided what is going to be the web technology i will implement for the web front. ASP.Net? playing safe with nice ISAPI Dll's? or a cool combination of ISAPI DLL's and Ajax?

I need to implement some interfaces between different systems, and DCOM is not an option due to security restrictions among the products, my initial thoughts went to SOAP but recently i've being reading about REST and i think i will give it a shot. I want to thank Marco Cantú on his blog for bringing some light to the topic.

I have to go for now, but, i will go deep into my experiences with all these later on.

Delphi 2006 Tour - Toronto

Well, i was supposed to post this a bit earlier, so people can find this information useful, but i am extremly busy at work.

Today, November 15th, Borland Canada will be showing the new features and enhancements of Borland Delphi 2006. An amazing event conducted by Mighty Michael Li.

For more information please visit the Toronto Delphi Users Group.

Hope to see you all there.

DataSnap... as good as it gets.

Well, for the last 2 years since i started using DataSnap, i can't stop feeling amazed of how good it is. I know that you guys may say that now its all about .Net Remoting and BDP, but, ladies and gents, DataSnap is extremly versatile and easy to use, and definitly a proven way of implementing VERY effective multi tier systems.

These days i've being using lots of nested datasets in mix with the Quantum Grid, you can't imagine the THOUSANDS of lines of code i'm saving myself everyday with these lethal combination.

I mean it, for the same amount of database operations, we have at work complete hard drives of code in Java. Write this down, it is until you work with a language not as versatile and powerful as Delphi when you realize HOW MUCH YOU LOVE IT.

I must admit that i really like the way KbMw does things, but DataSnap is so integrated into all the Delphi stuff that the idea of migrating all the code to KbMw is something for the long term.

Borland has not stopped the support on DataSnap although i must admit is extremly stable and mature, it is not their main concern, but i feel that its adoption is growing instead of going away, specially on WIN32 systems. I hope we can get some minors enhancements and a firm fix to the multi-procesor issues experienced with socket connections, cause i cant wait to set our systems on some nice MultiCore Opteron processors.

Good night, cya all later.

24 HOUR DELPHI 2006 MARATHON - BDN RADIO!

Well people, at 12:01 AM Pacific Time.

3:01 Eastern Time, the Delphi 2006 BDN Radio Marathon starts!!

Click here to get more information about the different speakers and schedules for this great event.

I'm taking my headphones to work. :)

Cya all there.

The Real Costa Rica.

A totally non-Delphi related post.

I'm from Costa Rica, the last 6 years i've being traveling around the world and now i'm in Canada. My country, cause of its touristic potential, is very popular these days, so, browsing the internet i found this website wrote by a US guy living down there.

I love reading the point of view of foreign visitors, usually, if objective, are very entertaining and gives me an idea on how the world may see us, (if they see us :)).

Go here and enjoy reading, is worth it. I laugh a lot on the Odd and Ends section.

New Delphi starting to appear on Borland's website.

Well, the mighty one is starting to show his head out of the egg shell.

For the first images of it, go here or here.

There is still not a public announcement of it, but Borland will start to receive pre-orders in October 17. It will ship out someday end of this year (possibly end of november).

Delphi Roadmap revealed!

The delphi roadmap for the next 3 years is up. Great news.

It was displayed at EKON 9 conference.

The Roadmap

• Dexter (end 2005) will have ECO 3 (with ECO Basic in all Delphi editions), specific support for 64bit .net, a full-blown version of Together for Delphi, focus on performance and quality, Fastcode Memory Manager, SQL Server Unicode in dbexpress, BDP Connection pooling, BDP SQl tracing, BDP Data Hub error reconciliation, new refactories and lots more.

• Highlander (2006) will support net 2.0 and provide a VCL for .NET 2.0, VCL for Compact Framework, support for 64bit .NET 2.0
  

• Delphi for Vista (2007) will include a VCL for Avalon and Indigo support
  

• Delphi/C++ for win64 (circa 2007).

* Taken from Marco Cantú notes.

Check a picture of the roadmap taken by Bob Swart.

I dont need to explain more, the picture says it all. :)

VCL becomes again the key factor around Delphi development, with ever changing MS specs, a common ground is needed and VCL give us that.

VCL works with Linux, Win32 and .Net, and it will support CF and Avalon in the coming future.

No need to redesign or alter your applications. woo hoo.

The first virtual world plague.

In what is to be known as the first virtual world plague, players from the famous Blizard's World of Warcraft game (I'm an addict Starcraft player) suffered a terrible plague that almost wipe out their virtual world population, Orcs laugh while they saw their human counterparts dying.

More information here.

Lol.

Delphi and LINQ.

Danny Thorpe, Borland's Chief Scientist, just came back from the PDC and express his impressions about LINQ and its future on Delphi.

Take a look at it here.

Promising future ahead. :)