Thursday, May 8, 2008

>10 years in the making...

Sure, the latest news of Embarcadero Technologies signing an definitive agreement to acquire the CodeGear portion of Borland's business is a recent development. However, looking back on my years here at Borland, I have to chuckle a little bit. I remember sitting with other Delphi team members many years ago on more than one occasion waxing poetically about how great it would be to spin out Delphi and the other dev tools products into either a stand-alone company or into the arms of someone who will nurture and cultivate their value. While at the time it was idle chit-chat, who would have thought that this day would actually come?

Throughout the day, yesterday, I got into several IM conversations from former co-workers all asking how I felt about the news. I honestly told them that this is the best outcome for the future of the developer tools products anyone of us here could have imagined. As I was on my way from work last night, I got a phone call on my mobile phone. I was wondering when I would get this call. The voice on the other end said, "Hi Allen, this is Chuck." Yep, I was totally expecting a direct phone call sometime from Chuck. If you've been following any of my posts over the last few years, you know that Chuck Jazdzewski was very instrumental in my getting hired at Borland. Chuck served as my mentor for many years.

Chuck's first question was one of concern and wanting to know how I felt about these developments. Thanks, Chuck, that meant a lot. We talked for a while as I was driving. Don't worry, I use a bluetooth hands free headset :-). Part of the conversation quickly drifted to our many conversations in the past about how cool it would be to take the dev tools out of Borland. Unfortunately, I arrived at my destination and had to cut the conversation short. I would like to have continued. Chuck agreed that if he had any other questions that he'd be sure to give me a call.

If there is one thing about my tenure with the Borland developer tools group, it has rarely ever been a dull moment. I doubt that is going to be changing any time soon. Change is something the CodeGear teams have become accustomed to. It's great that this change is one of the most positive ones :-).

8 comments:

  1. and anther phone call from danny, and another one from anders and another one from bill (steve is in vacation, being tired of the yahoo turn out :-)

    now, seriously, i do believe that you guys will do just fine, way better off than ever before (except maybe, the early 90s, we both know very well about)

    i am crossing my fingers for you guys, from the bottom of my heart!

    an ex co-worker :-)
    d

    ReplyDelete
  2. cheer up, allen!
    every one meets some situation whick looks bad.
    it's not exciting what happened to the devtool team.
    all will be gone, try to find the moment.
    we love delphi, we love kylix, we love you guys.
    try to be the winners, chance always lies in our life.

    ReplyDelete
  3. cst_zf,

    Who said I wasn't happy about this? This is *great* news. This is what I've been working with the CodeGear e-staff on for that last 2 years.

    Allen.

    ReplyDelete
  4. be happy allen, it's cool, trust me, it will be!
    delphi will live and so will the best team in the universe!
    d

    ReplyDelete
  5. By the way, will we have CodeGear Delphi as result or rather Embarcadero Delphi?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hello Allen! Besides of this Embarcadero affair, let me ask and offtopic question. In almost decade old article "OTA Live Chat Transcript" you have described KeyTracing IDE feature and mentioned "Internal KeyCode" values reported for each of meaningful keystokes. So perhaps you might know the answer for my question:
    How do i translate between this Internal KeyCode and TShortCut values?
    Thanks in advance, Al (leween#gmail.com)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Chuck left the Delphi team?!?

    Wow, I missed that one...

    Googling Chuck doesn't bring up much personal info. The best I can discover is this happened 3 years ago and that he's now at Microsoft. And that he favors tan colored trousers. Talk about keeping a low profile... :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Does this mean Delphi 2008 will be late?

    ReplyDelete

Please keep your comments related to the post on which you are commenting. No spam, personal attacks, or general nastiness. I will be watching and will delete comments I find irrelevant, offensive and unnecessary.