I hate extracurricular work as much as Mr. Fosdal hates scaffolding. So, who currently owns Delphi / RAD Studio, the name, history and viability of the CEO, and so on and so forth is something i feel i should not have to spend mental capacity on. But so so many times typing on this keyboard i have to type the current name. Em.. Id.. Bor... ?? !!. Inprice? No... bummer.
I hate extracurricular work as much as Mr. Fosdal hates scaffolding. So, who currently owns Delphi / RAD Studio, the name, history and viability of the CEO, and so on and so forth is something i feel i should not have to spend mental capacity on. But so so many times typing on this keyboard i have to type the current name. Em.. Id.. Bor... ?? !!. Inprice? No... bummer.
So i hereby suggest that whatever venture/vulture capitalist making good or bad out of "our" legacy should be addressable by one single eternal name.
My personal suggestion is "Borcogembidera"! But, alas! it's flawed!! EFAFF: Interface fails to implement the 'eternal' property.
So i hereby suggest that whatever venture/vulture capitalist making good or bad out of "our" legacy should be addressable by one single eternal name.
My personal suggestion is "Borcogembidera"! But, alas! it's flawed!! EFAFF: Interface fails to implement the 'eternal' property.
BorInpadero
ReplyDeleteDid you have to write Thoma Bravo anywhere here before? So why do you bother writing Idera anywhere? It is still Embarcadero. If that is too long, do it like many people do, write Emba. If you are talking to anyone outside the community I don't think you need to use the name that often.
ReplyDeleteIf you can't remember a simple name how do you work as a software developer anyway ;)
Hmm... names that "alliterate" and connects to blobby uninteresting humans or abstract scary companies are quite something else to remember then well-named objects, patterns, visions, ideas, concepts et al.
ReplyDeleteI do remember humans are called humans. And i do remember the term evolution being used as the current rationale as to why we ended up with all of those outside my window!
The neighbor that bitched me for mowing the lawn too late yesterday though... that was... Dan? Daniel? Danny? David? Ah, what the..., that was a... Dude.
I vote for them to acquire the "Borland" brand back!
ReplyDeleteTurboPascal was Borland's first product, and they company grew up around language products. Then they started spreading out into other things and totally lost their way.
I suspect Philippe Kahn cringes if he ever thinks about the fact that the company he used to bash mercilessly for building logic into their compiler that could detect the presence of standard COBOL benchmarks and then emit hand-optimized code that nobody else could ever possibly generate automatically, ended up acquiring the Borland brand for use with nothing related to what gave it birth, while the language products that descended from that brand have no flagship name recognition or significant presence in the market.
Oh, how many times do I tell people that I program in Delphi and their reply is, "Oh, is that still around? Borland, right?"
I want to blurt out, "No! Borland ... as in MICRO-effing-FOCUS COBOL!!!" (I actually said something like that once to a guy and he got a really weird look on his face and then said, "Wait ... Borland never sold a COBOL compiler, did they?")
Stefan Glienke somehow I get the feeling there are few software developers remaining on the planet... just folks that string "open source" together, to make more open source, where "free and open source" really has become about the "free beer" side rather than right or openness (and probably consumed while stringing all the code together)... /rant slowly subsiding - sorry for the segway.
ReplyDeleteJoe C. Hecht I am missing the relation to the topic - can you explain please?
ReplyDeleteStefan Glienke you mentioned how does one works as a software engineer if, and I expressed ny doubts as to how many actually still exist (noting both a rant and a segway, thus fairly disclaiming the quantity of pertainability).
ReplyDeleteJoe C. Hecht My comment was more meant ironically as I guess was yours. I could also have said, well if you don't like all the existing standards (names so far that "owned" Delphi) just come up with a new one ;)
ReplyDeleteThey should all be known as Coretas the goat herder and the true founder :P
ReplyDeleteI used to call it BIBCE (Borland - Inprise - Borland - CodeGear - Embarcadero) but now I guess I should use BIBCEI.
ReplyDeleteJoe C. Hecht "Somehow I get the feeling there are few software developers remaining on the planet... just folks that string "open source" together, to make more open source"
ReplyDeleteI guess we see things differently then, because I'm quite enjoying a world like that. It's gotten to the point that for my last two "projects" I not only found libraries that did what I wanted to do, the library author had included a standalone program using it that did what I was hoping to accomplish. :-) Two projects down, zero lines of code written. :-)
Once upon a time Delphi appeared and abstracted away the then horrible Windows libraries and handled all of the housekeeping so that you could focus on solving the actual problem you were writing the program for. Open source does that on an even grander scale today, providing libraries that handle almost all common/mundane tasks, letting people focus on code that directly solves their problem - which they hopefully turn into a library and make open source! :-)
Joseph Mitzen Yes, but you are one of the few remaining real software developers still exist on the planet.
ReplyDeleteI love code re-use. Taken in with a bit of care (and perhaps a bit of knowledge) it's a great thing.
More and more, I get a lot of questions in my mailbox finding folks that are very good at "cut, copy, and pasting" code examples together to form something "that works", but they also clearly demonstrate the lack the basic understanding of what they are actually doing (or anything about the libs they are using).
Finally, there is the overall question of quality. Sure, someone can string something together, but is it any good?
Some (most?) blindly rely on these open source libs (and create more open source based on them for others to blindly use). Often enough, they are not well maintained, and some contain dangerous vulnerabilities. Some are lucky enough to be used in some major release and get some attention (as evidenced by the re-re-re patches I see often enough).
I looked though one very popular project that was strung together, and came away rather horrified. It wont be long before the hackers go at it, and it becomes front page news (and few will probably care).
In the end, I think more and more, there are "coders" that know what they are doing, and there are many new ones that (largely) do not.
Joe
Joe C. Hecht Code in the past often was not any better and had the same dangerous vulnerabilities. Open sourced code if getting enough attention rather gets fixed than closed source that just "works".
ReplyDeleteThe thing is that nowadays more people do "coding" thus the number of average or below quality might get more.
That does not mean there are less "real" software developers out there - rather more. Things are changing rapidly and you have to change yourself and thinking about software as well. Many people are not capable of that.