Crop circles..

There have been some 64bit .NET sightings over on Danny's blog. I'm using a backup machine I brought along just in case something whacky happened to my main machine. So... while the patient is being reformatted and installing on a new hard drive, I'll post this link...

Kicking hornets nests..

It certainly looks like I kicked the proverbial hornet's nest with my last set of comments. There are some great comments and feed back on what folks thoughts are on the importance of native 64bit computing. What we are looking for here is a critical mass that would convince the marketers of its viability. Also there are the opportunity costs associated with targeting another platform.

Fun with bits. 64bits that is...

Danny and I are currently visiting Microsoft for a 64bit OS Dev lab. In fact I'm posting this entry from within the lab itself. We're here doing relative performance comparisons with native 64bit and .NET 64bit. This is just us keeping our finger on the pulse of upcoming technologies. One thing that was loud and clear, was that MS is clearly pushing developers to use .NET as their migration story into the 64bit OS space. Of course for the low-level/device-driver crowd, native codegen is still important, however for application developers and their associated tools, .NET is the wave of the future.

What do you think?

Shorter Path Software - Tips for Converting VCL Components to VCL.NET

Shorter Path Software - Tips for Converting VCL Components to VCL.NET

TeamB'er, Yorai Aminov, has a very well written article outlining various steps that you should take in order to port your existing Delphi VCL components to Delphi 8 for MS .NET. I do like the subtle note on the sidebar that implies you should now think of a "pointer" as a breed of dog and not a language construct...

Good job, Yorai.

Allen Bauer - Borland Delphi and C#Builder IDE Architect

Allen Bauer - Borland Delphi and C#Builder IDE Architect

I don't know if I should be flattered or a little spooked. Looks like Danny has been up there for a while.

Some changes

I've changed my comment system from dotComments to blogKomm since it supports inline comments without a popup window. I also preserved the existing comments by writing a little Delphi application that grabs the comments in the dotComments format and translated them to blogKomm's format. Additionally I shamlessly stole some styles from Danny's blog.

Attribute Syntax

Attribute Syntax

Danny asks a rather pointed question regarding attribute support in future versions of Delphi for Win32. Remember, this is a very unscientific poll...

Borland C#Builder wins Reader's Choice award from Visual Studio Magazine

FTPOnline - VSLive! SF 2004 - VSM Announces 2004 Readers Choice Awards

This award has a certain amount of satisfaction tied to it...

Intel on 64-Bit: We copy AMD but we're still better...

Intel on 64-Bit: We copy AMD but we're still better...

The posturing has already started. The Intel spin-doctors are certainly working overtime now...

EU slaps record fine on Microsoft | CNET News.com

EU slaps record fine on Microsoft | CNET News.com

I have many friends and acquaintances up there in Redmond. They are all very dedicated and talented engineers. I'm personally conflicted on this whole issue. On the one hand, I am convinced that MS has abused its dominant position. On the other hand, I'm also convinced that at the development levels they feel that they are providing true value to the customer. I also believe that they do. I'd have to say that since they've retained the services of many... ahem... former Borlanders, there has been some truly remarkable and innovative technologies. Now I'm not saying that this is a direct result of former Borlanders as they certainly have some very talented engineers that have never worked for Borland. I just find that at the core of many of the new, neat and interesting technologies, there is at least one former Borlander.

Since Microsoft has been under the anti-trust microscope, they have been a much more open company. They have certainly started to show that under that tough exterior, there is a relatively soft underbelly. I've said this many times before, Borland's relationship with Microsoft over the last several years has been better than it has ever been in the past. Yes, part of the reason for that is that Microsoft is trying to keep the anti-trust wolves at bay, but they also really see the value in third-party development tools supporting their platform (Windows).