Wednesday, January 3, 2007

The year ahead...

Welcome to the new year!  A new year is a convenient opportunity for one to shed some of the negative baggage from the past year(s) and concentrate on doing better (personally, professionally, family, etc...) throughout the coming year.  My pragmatic and skeptical side tends to eschew such patently “false” and “self-delusional” things like new years resolutions.  I far prefer to be retrospective in December to see how I did, rather than setup up some “pie-in-the-sky” aspiration formed late on December 31st only to stumble and become discouraged or outright forget by January 3rd.  This is why I posted my year in review last week.  To be blunt about it, on January 1st, 2006, I had nearly no clue about what 2006 would hold.  I had reasons to be cautiously optimistic.  However, as we all know, some pretty big changes came about in 2006.

That said, I'm not going to let that stop me from making a few bold predictions and set a few goals for 2007 ;-).

  • CodeGear officially launches in Q1.
  • CodeGear releases several new (as in not Delphi, C++ or JBuilder) products in 2007.
  • Newly revised Delphi and C++ roadmap published.
  • Overall CodeGear team grows throughout 2007.
  • Increase the overall “fun-factor“ for those that work at CodeGear (hmmm.... maybe we need Nerf guns for all the engineers??)

There's probably more that I haven't thought about right now, but that should get things started. 

On another topic, apparently I completely missed being “tagged” by Nick.  Now it has come to my attention that Chad Hower (of Indy fame) has also tagged me...

So here goes:  Five things you (probably) didn't know about me...

  • I have not piloted an F/A-18... But I do have a really cool picture of an F-15E on the wall in my office ;-).  I've had other engineers over the years offer real money for it!
  • I started to build a robot when I was 13 and actually have working arms, base with motorized wheels, and body. It kinda looks like R2D2.
  • Before CodeGear(and Borland), I used to design, prototype, build and program magnetic stripe encoders and access control equipment.  I had this job within 1 year of graduating high-school.
  • I have a patent that is currently pending.
  • My favorite SciFi book was Dune by Frank Herbert.  In fact all the machines I've had over the years are always named for something from those books.  The name of the machine I'm using right now is Atreides.  There is also Sardaukar, Feyd, and Shaddam in my office but many other names have been used over the years.

So that's it.  I guess I need to “tag” someone else now?  How about Marco Cantu and Dr. Bob Swart?

7 comments:

  1. Nice "5 things" list. I knew it all except I didn't know that you started to build a robot.


    I really like reading the 5 things list because you do learn alot about someone that normally doesn't come up in conversation that often.


    Some of my first books I had when I was 12 were Robotics books I got from the Electronics Book of the Month club. I was going to build a robot until i realized how hard it really is. My hat is off to you sir.







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  2. Shouldn't one goal of 2007 be to release at least 2 versions of Delphi?

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  3. It would have made me feel better to see "release Delphi 2007 before Q3" as one of your bold projections.

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  4. "My pragmatic and skeptical side tends to eschew such patently “false” and “self-delusional” things like new years resolutions."


    Eschew?? Pragmatic and skeptical side?


    These people obviously don't know what I know about you.


    You'd be surprised who you find when you start Googling people.


    I'll leave things at that since this is obviously business oriented.


    Hugs to K and the kids and hope everything is well!


    B.A.

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  5. B.A.!!!! It is most excellent to hear from you! How's E and the kids on your end? I see you're posting from a Charter cable modem, right? ;-). Drop me a line at "allen dot bauer at CodeGear dot com."


    Allen.

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  6. Hello,


    Just wanted to add my tuppence-worth. I was concerned to see talk of new products when BDS still crashes several times a day and is still only .NET 1.1. I have just installed VS2005 (first ever use of a MS IDE) and I can see me using it for all my new projects unless CodeGear pulls something out of the bag.


    I don't use BDP or other Borland specific stuff so I could even port my existing .NET pascal code via Chrome.


    I'd prefer to stick to Borland/CodeGear as I have used Delphi since v1, but I have to be productive and BDS does not give me the edge over VS2005 that I would have hoped and expected.


    Here's hoping for a new, stable, Unicode and .NET 2.0 BDS in 2007 - and one that does not require hundreds of Borland GAC assemblies to run the simplest app!


    Graham

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  7. You mention a growth of CodeGear in 2007.

    As for now there are rumours that the Holland office will be closed down.....

    Is there any truth in that?

    If it is, we feel highly disappointed and left alone here.

    Johan Parent

    SDN - Holland

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