Product Leadership Team, Research, Weaver, Delphi Live! - Oh my!

First of all I must apologize profusely for the dearth of posts here over the last few months. OK, "dearth" in this case would unfortunately, be an overstatement since the last thing I posted here was right after the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. While I do have explanations for this silence, I don't view them as excuses. Excuses are something that one does to deflect responsibility and blame off themselves. So I make no excuses and take full responsibility for the decided lack of posting I've done over the last few months. Certainly, some of the reasons for remaining silent here can be attributed to major distractions and that I could not talk about the stuff I've been working on. Other reasons are far less interesting and boil down to pure laziness and lack of motivation on my part. The good new is I now do have some stuff to talk about and the motivation to do has finally come back :-) Let's get started... again.

 

Product Leadership Team

Last fall, Embarcadero formed a special team that meets periodically to discuss all kinds of things about the products, their direction, markets, technology, etc... Another charter for this team is to identify technologies and market trends and to think of ways we can either leverage, drive and or otherwise participate in any of these emerging trends or markets. Or not. Deciding to not pursue a market or trend is just as valid of an outcome as deciding to do something. I'm able to be involved with this team that includes our CTO, James Pitts and our VP of Products, Michael Swindell, and at times Wayne Williams, the EMBT CEO. There are also a couple of other very senior engineers on this team with whom we can really do deep dives into technology and ideas.

Late last year, the PLT commissioned some research and even some preliminary development on some new product directions. Myself and a couple of other senior engineers have been off feverishly toiling away at this. It is this work I've been doing over the last few months that I've been unable to really talk about. There are two main reasons for remaining silent. First of all, as with any research project, it could be cancelled or shelved at any time. We don't want to talk too much about something that, while exciting, may never come to fruition. Secondly, what I talk about early into the research may have zero or nearly zero bearing on the final outcome. The good news is that it is very likely that some sneak peaks will be coming at the Delphi Live! conference in San Jose, CA. So, if you haven't signed up yet, now is the time.

 

Weaver

Hopefully by now you've heard about the next major RAD Studio release, code-named Weaver. You can even apply to field-test this new version here. If you want to see what coming in the next release and feel you have some valuable feedback, make your case and apply to participate by clicking on the above link (posting a comment here won't work). Again, if you're coming to Delphi Live! there is certain to be some information and demos with Weaver.

 

Delphi Live!

In case you haven't guessed, a common theme throughout this post is to stress the importance of attending the first face-to-face Delphi and C++Builder centric conference and the first major conference with Delphi content in over 4 years since the last Borland Conference. I will be there doing a talk on a lot of the newer designer features that have been introduced over the last 4 or 5 Delphi releases. I'll cover things like guidelines, property filters, and maybe even some new stuff coming in Weaver. I'll also be helping out with the Product Address and any "What's Cooking in the Labs?" discussions. There will also be a meet-the-team session where you can come meet nearly the entire RAD Studio development team and get your chance to corner one of us to discuss your favorite product feature or even the lack thereof :-). I'll see you all there!