Board index » off-topic » Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home


2003-11-07 06:11:52 AM
off-topic8
Now that the daily bloggers have registered their streams of consciousness
ramblings with the hungry masses, it is time for a
broader view afforded by age, wisdom, and an incredibly huge ego <g>.
The Borland Conference is an entire world unto itself. It never ceases to
amaze me how quickly such a world can physically be deconstructed in mere
minutes after the annual diaspora of the faithful back to their homes, jobs
and everyday lives. For a few days they have communed with other select
members of a huge {*word*104} crowd, a community that is linked by active
newsgroups, email lists, user groups and chats most of the year. People who
haven't physically seen each other for a year or maybe have never physically
met talk as if they were next door neighbors for their whole lives. Walk down
an aisle in the cafeteria space. There's Team B member Nick Hodges, shorn of
his hippie locks to give the illusion of conservatism. (We know he really
harbors a deep distrust of Bush and his foreign policy but has to create a
politically conservative appearance that won't blow his cover as a CIA agent
investigating the far right.) There's Ray Lischner, Shakespearean cake
decorator asking the tough questions on behalf of the downtrodden silent
majority. There's John Kaster, secretly trying to figure out how to be even
more efficient in his communications so as to seem even more gruff on the
newsgroups, but thwarted by a constant stream of responsibilities and
activities that distracts him from this task. There's the very parsimonious
Dave Nottage, leather-clad loner contemplating the LONG plane ride home to
Oz. Wait! Who's that over-animated, Australian idiom-spouting man wondering
where his zillionth beer has disppeared to? Why it is
Geoff Harris, rescuer of the Flashfiler legacy and founder of NexusDB.
In past years I've used the metaphor that draws a parallel with Olympus,
mount of the gods. At BorCon us mere mortals can talk with the gods of the
Borland universe. The result is a plethora of great stories, fascinating
facts and lots of odd little things. Speaking of odd little things, I sat
next to Brion Webster and fellow blogger Robert Love at the closing keynote
and prize distribution. Brion made a comment wondering why Blake Stone was
standing there on stage holding his jacket next to his right side. I
suggested to him that this was because Blake* actually has his {*word*145}s on
the side of his body. O.K. I admit is a bit over the top, but I guess I was
still annoyed at the corporatespeak non-answer he gave to Ray Lischner after
Ray's big question that contained the interesting metaphor making Kylix the
Terry Schiavo of the development world. Like many of Borland's customer's,
Ray wanted to know why Borland didn't just come clean and announce that Kylix
was officially dead. After the conference I had a chance to ask Ray what he
thought was the reason that Borland hadn't pulled the plug. He had an
interesting speculation, namely that Borland may have some agreement with
TrollTech preventing an outright killing of the project. I have to admit that
I asked a pretty tough question myself of the C++ team during the "Meet the
Team" meeting for them, but we'll get to that later. That meeting was one of
the most difficult "Meet the Team" meetings I've ever seen, as far as the
team being grilled. The odd thing is that I had actually planned to go to
the "Meet the JBuilder Team" but they had gone to a bar when there were more
team members than customers at the meeting. Ray was at the C++ meeting but
didn't ask the question that I wanted addressed, so I actually went up
and...oh wait, that can wait for the chronological part of this most
excellent treatise I now pen.
[*By the way, Blake actually met his wife at a BorCon! So it really is a
marriage "Made in Borland"!]
Before I go on, it would probably be good to point out that Borlanders
probably were glad that this one was finally over today. There seem to be two
groups of very angry and/or disaffected blocks of customers 1) existing C++
customers that don't see anything being done to account for their existing
legacy code, 2) Delphi programmers that want Delphi for Win32 to get more
stuff before being laid to rest. I'll get to both over the course of my
observations, but off the top of my head I'd have to say the C++ customers
were very disaffected and wanted to make sure that Borland knew this, whereas
the Delphi programmers are tempered by their e{*word*277}ment and interest in the
stuff that Delphi for .NET will be getting. Borland has been giving Delphi
more cycles attention than C++, but everyone can see that JBuilder is the
leader in features and attention.
Having said all this, I think Borland is poised on the cusp of an inflection
point. Last year the biggest thing at BorCon was .NET and the e{*word*277}ment of
this new direction drove the conference. This on the other hand is the first
BorCon after the blitzkrieg acquistion burst that brought full coverage of
the gods of Agile processes and methods into the Borland camp at the same
time that IBM had grabbed the old guard at Rational. This might not e{*word*277}
technophiles the way past conferences have e{*word*277}d them, but this is far more
important and positions Borland very well in the high-end market that caters
to senior software developers. Newbies and those weak-kneed lily livered
milquetoasts known as daily bloggers might get e{*word*277}d the most by
repackaging of prior technology, like we see in .NET, or by whiz-bang
pyrotactics (spelling is intentional) and $250,000 production numbers (such
as the Star Wars spoof at BorCon in 1997), but once you've done the same
thing for a decade or more, you realize that method and process make more
difference than what tools or technologies are chosen. I attended a lot of
sessions on Agile stuff because I am getting more and more e{*word*277}d about the
revolution, nay outright rebellion, that is the Agile movement. Out with the
old (Rational) and in with the
new (Agile). Ding, dong! The witch is dead!
Some miscellaneous points in no particular order:
Daily blogger Robert Love aptly demonstrated an interesting fact about fellow
blogger Brion during the final closing session. As usual, T-shirt projectiles
were aimed at the crowd, who were eagerly trying to be targets, when one of
these said upper body coverings came directly toward us. In the ensuing mass
of confused human limbs flailing in vain for the treasure, the desired item
slipped out of sight. I thought Brion had sat on said item, but in a
genuinely interesting and probably Freudian act, Robert looked down and found
it between Brion's legs. Well, between his feet at least, but that just makes
the psychological implications all that much richer, does it not? Things got
even more like the Twilight Zone when Robert's name came up during the
drawings for the prize bags and his prize was two bags full of four "C++ in a
Nutshell" books. Cheap greedy bastard that I am, I suggested he donate one to
the cause, and I now have a copy of said book for naught a penny. Alas, I
have now attended 4 Borcons (three in a row) and I have yet to win anything
at the final session. And yet a mere daily blogger cleans up. It is a
travesty of justice, says I.
Neither DevExpress, Mark Miller nor anybody from RemObjects had any kind of
presence at the conference (though Dr Bob did a BoF on RemObjects). And of
course there was the obvious absence of Turbopower for the first time since
longer than I can tell. However, there were Turbopower there, as Falafel
Software had a large booth with part of that devoted to ComponentScience,
which is constituted of many former Turbopower guys. I had a chance to talk
with Sean Winstead, who had the thankless task of winding down Turbopower in
its last days. I asked about the future of SleuthQA. Apparently Aristocrat
couldn't find any buyers willing to pay what they were asking, so SleuthQA
resembles Kyliix, languishing in what is a persistent vegetative state, not
really there but never officially dispensed with either. Sean suggested that
AutomatedQA has products that more than adequately cover this space anyway
(and that Aristocrat had not given then the resources to do better with
SleuthQA). By the way, for those of you who like to know some social details,
Sean is a tall bespectacled quiet guy that speaks in quiet measured tones.
My unconscious mind apparently gets quite bored with the meager crumbs it
gets from my conscious self and so amuses itself with various pastimes, some
of which intrude oddly into my life. One of these pastimes is the forming of
pairs than then often become interchanged when I am sleep deprived,
stressed, etc. One such pairing is Chad Hower and Clay Shannon. I don't know
why my mind has formed this duality in this particular case but I was
reminded of it every single time I talked to Chad Hower, which was quite
often at this BorCon. Chad lives an interesting life in the sense that he
does a heck of a lot of travelling and in fact has moved the place he calls
home quite a bit too. He winters in Cyprus and summers in Russia. Last I
heard, Clay was living in Wisconsin, which he describes as void of
interesting Delphi work. There must be something common between these two
other than the fact that they both do Delphi, because these pairings my
unconscious mind does are always rational in their origin, if not always in
their continuance. Or so I like to tell myself. I was highly sleep deprived
at BorCon, and in fact felt hungover the last day, though I hadn't drunk
anything the night before. Maybe that was it. Another such pairing is Geoff
Harris, the animated Australian (in fact I think this should be his permanent
nick-name, "The Animated Australian") and Dudley Moore. This one I
understand. But the
Clay Shannon and Chad Hower pairing? Where is the logic there?
But I digress. Again. In fact, this digression reminds me of a great Mark
Twain quote that goes something like this, "Imagine you are an idiot. Now,
imagine you are a congressman. But I repeat myself." How is Mark Twain
related to this sleep-deprivation-inspired stream of consciousness? I guess
you'll have to credit Clay Shannon for that link. It is too bad that Clay
wasn't at BorCon. I'd like to meet him sometime. There aren't that many
Delphi programmers that can really write. Or at least write that way.
Tuesday night at the movies was The Matrix Reloaded, a movie that I like
better each time I see it. By the way people, go to moviemistakes.com and
look it up there. Interesting trivia and interesting mistakes. Anyway, Nick
Hodges didn't show up, obviously because he was busy protesting the war in
Iraq or engaging in some other such liberal pinhead type of activity. Chad
Hower wasn't there, despite having borrowed my copy of The Matrix so his
significant other could see it before The Matrix Reloaded and Wednesday
night's viewing of Revolutions, a trifecta of theatrical triumph no doubt.
But alas, though they were able to watch The Matrix on the big plasma screen
they had for the Atozed booth, they missed Reloaded and therefore the
trifecta. But these things happen, especially in such an action-packed time
as BorCon. But as is always the case it seems, technical problems made the
showing a half hour late and so we weren't done until almost 1 AM. In Chicago
that is 3AM. Hence my current fatigue.
More later, in the next installment...
--
***Free Your Mind***
 
 

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

Thanks Jake, wonderful!
--
Hannes Danzl [NexusDB Developer]
Newsgroup archive at www.tamaracka.com/search.htm
 

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

Jake:
It's not too late getting certified for a Tech Reporter Job! Good job.
Chris
"Captain Jake" <johnjac76[nospam]@comcast.net>wrote in message
Quote

Now that the daily bloggers have registered their streams of consciousness
ramblings with the hungry masses, it is time for a
broader view afforded by age, wisdom, and an incredibly huge ego <g>.

The Borland Conference is an entire world unto itself. It never ceases to
amaze me how quickly such a world can physically be deconstructed in mere
minutes after the annual diaspora of the faithful back to their homes,
jobs
and everyday lives. For a few days they have communed with other select
members of a huge {*word*104} crowd, a community that is linked by active
newsgroups, email lists, user groups and chats most of the year. People
who
haven't physically seen each other for a year or maybe have never
physically
met talk as if they were next door neighbors for their whole lives. Walk
down
an aisle in the cafeteria space. There's Team B member Nick Hodges, shorn
of
his hippie locks to give the illusion of conservatism. (We know he really
harbors a deep distrust of Bush and his foreign policy but has to create a
politically conservative appearance that won't blow his cover as a CIA
agent
investigating the far right.) There's Ray Lischner, Shakespearean cake
decorator asking the tough questions on behalf of the downtrodden silent
majority. There's John Kaster, secretly trying to figure out how to be
even
more efficient in his communications so as to seem even more gruff on the
newsgroups, but thwarted by a constant stream of responsibilities and
activities that distracts him from this task. There's the very
parsimonious
Dave Nottage, leather-clad loner contemplating the LONG plane ride home to
Oz. Wait! Who's that over-animated, Australian idiom-spouting man
wondering
where his zillionth beer has disppeared to? Why it is
Geoff Harris, rescuer of the Flashfiler legacy and founder of NexusDB.

In past years I've used the metaphor that draws a parallel with Olympus,
mount of the gods. At BorCon us mere mortals can talk with the gods of the
Borland universe. The result is a plethora of great stories, fascinating
facts and lots of odd little things. Speaking of odd little things, I sat
next to Brion Webster and fellow blogger Robert Love at the closing
keynote
and prize distribution. Brion made a comment wondering why Blake Stone was
standing there on stage holding his jacket next to his right side. I
suggested to him that this was because Blake* actually has his {*word*145}s on
the side of his body. O.K. I admit is a bit over the top, but I guess I
was
still annoyed at the corporatespeak non-answer he gave to Ray Lischner
after
Ray's big question that contained the interesting metaphor making Kylix
the
Terry Schiavo of the development world. Like many of Borland's customer's,
Ray wanted to know why Borland didn't just come clean and announce that
Kylix
was officially dead. After the conference I had a chance to ask Ray what
he
thought was the reason that Borland hadn't pulled the plug. He had an
interesting speculation, namely that Borland may have some agreement with
TrollTech preventing an outright killing of the project. I have to admit
that
I asked a pretty tough question myself of the C++ team during the "Meet
the
Team" meeting for them, but we'll get to that later. That meeting was one
of
the most difficult "Meet the Team" meetings I've ever seen, as far as the
team being grilled. The odd thing is that I had actually planned to go to
the "Meet the JBuilder Team" but they had gone to a bar when there were
more
team members than customers at the meeting. Ray was at the C++ meeting but
didn't ask the question that I wanted addressed, so I actually went up
and...oh wait, that can wait for the chronological part of this most
excellent treatise I now pen.

[*By the way, Blake actually met his wife at a BorCon! So it really is a
marriage "Made in Borland"!]

Before I go on, it would probably be good to point out that Borlanders
probably were glad that this one was finally over today. There seem to be
two
groups of very angry and/or disaffected blocks of customers 1) existing
C++
customers that don't see anything being done to account for their
existing
legacy code, 2) Delphi programmers that want Delphi for Win32 to get more
stuff before being laid to rest. I'll get to both over the course of my
observations, but off the top of my head I'd have to say the C++ customers
were very disaffected and wanted to make sure that Borland knew this,
whereas
the Delphi programmers are tempered by their e{*word*277}ment and interest in
the
stuff that Delphi for .NET will be getting. Borland has been giving Delphi
more cycles attention than C++, but everyone can see that JBuilder is the
leader in features and attention.

Having said all this, I think Borland is poised on the cusp of an
inflection
point. Last year the biggest thing at BorCon was .NET and the e{*word*277}ment
of
this new direction drove the conference. This on the other hand is the
first
BorCon after the blitzkrieg acquistion burst that brought full coverage of
the gods of Agile processes and methods into the Borland camp at the same
time that IBM had grabbed the old guard at Rational. This might not e{*word*277}
technophiles the way past conferences have e{*word*277}d them, but this is far
more
important and positions Borland very well in the high-end market that
caters
to senior software developers. Newbies and those weak-kneed lily livered
milquetoasts known as daily bloggers might get e{*word*277}d the most by
repackaging of prior technology, like we see in .NET, or by whiz-bang
pyrotactics (spelling is intentional) and $250,000 production numbers
(such
as the Star Wars spoof at BorCon in 1997), but once you've done the same
thing for a decade or more, you realize that method and process make more
difference than what tools or technologies are chosen. I attended a lot of
sessions on Agile stuff because I am getting more and more e{*word*277}d about
the
revolution, nay outright rebellion, that is the Agile movement. Out with
the
old (Rational) and in with the
new (Agile). Ding, dong! The witch is dead!

Some miscellaneous points in no particular order:

Daily blogger Robert Love aptly demonstrated an interesting fact about
fellow
blogger Brion during the final closing session. As usual, T-shirt
projectiles
were aimed at the crowd, who were eagerly trying to be targets, when one
of
these said upper body coverings came directly toward us. In the ensuing
mass
of confused human limbs flailing in vain for the treasure, the desired
item
slipped out of sight. I thought Brion had sat on said item, but in a
genuinely interesting and probably Freudian act, Robert looked down and
found
it between Brion's legs. Well, between his feet at least, but that just
makes
the psychological implications all that much richer, does it not? Things
got
even more like the Twilight Zone when Robert's name came up during the
drawings for the prize bags and his prize was two bags full of four "C++
in a
Nutshell" books. Cheap greedy bastard that I am, I suggested he donate one
to
the cause, and I now have a copy of said book for naught a penny. Alas, I
have now attended 4 Borcons (three in a row) and I have yet to win
anything
at the final session. And yet a mere daily blogger cleans up. It is a
travesty of justice, says I.

Neither DevExpress, Mark Miller nor anybody from RemObjects had any kind
of
presence at the conference (though Dr Bob did a BoF on RemObjects). And of
course there was the obvious absence of Turbopower for the first time
since
longer than I can tell. However, there were Turbopower there, as Falafel
Software had a large booth with part of that devoted to ComponentScience,
which is constituted of many former Turbopower guys. I had a chance to
talk
with Sean Winstead, who had the thankless task of winding down Turbopower
in
its last days. I asked about the future of SleuthQA. Apparently Aristocrat
couldn't find any buyers willing to pay what they were asking, so SleuthQA
resembles Kyliix, languishing in what is a persistent vegetative state,
not
really there but never officially dispensed with either. Sean suggested
that
AutomatedQA has products that more than adequately cover this space anyway
(and that Aristocrat had not given then the resources to do better with
SleuthQA). By the way, for those of you who like to know some social
details,
Sean is a tall bespectacled quiet guy that speaks in quiet measured
tones.

My unconscious mind apparently gets quite bored with the meager crumbs it
gets from my conscious self and so amuses itself with various pastimes,
some
of which intrude oddly into my life. One of these pastimes is the forming
of
pairs than then often become interchanged when I am sleep deprived,
stressed, etc. One such pairing is Chad Hower and Clay Shannon. I don't
know
why my mind has formed this duality in this particular case but I was
reminded of it every single time I talked to Chad Hower, which was quite
often at this BorCon. Chad lives an interesting life in the sense that he
does a heck of a lot of travelling and in fact has moved the place he
calls
home quite a bit too. He winters in Cyprus and summers in Russia. Last I
heard, Clay was living in Wisconsin, which he describes as void of
interesting Delphi work. There must be something common between these two
other than the fact that they both do Delphi, because these pairings my
unconscious mind does are always rational in their origin, if not always
in
their continuance. Or so I like to tell myself. I was highly sleep
deprived
at BorCon, and in fact felt hungover the last day, though I hadn't drunk
anything the night before. Maybe that was it. Another such pairing is
Geoff
Harris, the animated Australian (in fact I think this should be his
permanent
nick-name, "The Animated Australian") and Dudley Moore. This one I
understand. But the
Clay Shannon and Chad Hower pairing? Where is the logic there?

But I digress. Again. In fact, this digression reminds me of a great Mark
Twain quote that goes something like this, "Imagine you are an idiot. Now,
imagine you are a congressman. But I repeat myself." How is Mark Twain
related to this sleep-deprivation-inspired stream of consciousness? I
guess
you'll have to credit Clay Shannon for that link. It is too bad that Clay
wasn't at BorCon. I'd like to meet him sometime. There aren't that many
Delphi programmers that can really write. Or at least write that way.

Tuesday night at the movies was The Matrix Reloaded, a movie that I like
better each time I see it. By the way people, go to moviemistakes.com and
look it up there. Interesting trivia and interesting mistakes. Anyway,
Nick
Hodges didn't show up, obviously because he was busy protesting the war in
Iraq or engaging in some other such liberal pinhead type of activity. Chad
Hower wasn't there, despite having borrowed my copy of The Matrix so his
significant other could see it before The Matrix Reloaded and Wednesday
night's viewing of Revolutions, a trifecta of theatrical triumph no
doubt.
But alas, though they were able to watch The Matrix on the big plasma
screen
they had for the Atozed booth, they missed Reloaded and therefore the
trifecta. But these things happen, especially in such an action-packed
time
as BorCon. But as is always the case it seems, technical problems made the
showing a half hour late and so we weren't done until almost 1 AM. In
Chicago
that is 3AM. Hence my current fatigue.

More later, in the next installment...


--

***Free Your Mind***

 

{smallsort}

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

In borland.public.conference, chrisC < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >wrote in message
< XXXX@XXXXX.COM >...
Quote
It's not too late getting certified for a Tech Reporter Job!
Huh?
--
***Free Your Mind***
 

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

"Captain Jake" <johnjac76[nospam]@comcast.net>wrote in message
OMG... Printed for bed time reading (not because it's boring <G>just
because it's loooooooooooooong <G>).
Thanks Jake!
--
Best regards,
Alessandro Federici
RemObjects Software, Inc.
www.remobjects.com
 

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

Thanks Jake. I really ought to save up big time and attend one of these
shindings! Maybe next year....
--
Cheers,
David Clegg
dclegg_at_ebetonline_dot_com
WriteLn('New Zealand All Blacks RWC 2003 {*word*69}:');
WriteLn(Format('All Blacks def %s %d-%d', ['Italy', 70, 7]));
WriteLn(Format('All Blacks def %s %d-%d', ['Canada', 68, 6]));
WriteLn(Format('All Blacks def %s %d-%d', ['Tonga', 91, 7]));
WriteLn(Format('All Blacks def %s %d-%d', ['Wales', 53, 37]));
 

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

Quote
There's Ray Lischner, Shakespearean cake decorator
LOL
Great piece, Jake
- Per
 

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

Captain Jake wrote:
Quote
Nick Hodges didn't show up, obviously because he was busy
protesting the war in Iraq
ROFLMBO!!!!!
Quote
More later, in the next installment...
thanks Jake, you're great read, or scribe!
--
Kristofer
 

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

Written very well. Did you miss your true calling...
Thanks,
Ross
 

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

Captain Jake wrote:
Quote
than customers at the meeting. Ray was at the C++ meeting but didn't
ask the question that I wanted addressed, so I actually went up
and...oh wait, that can wait for the chronological part of this most
excellent treatise I now pen.
Aarrrrggggghhhhh.
 

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

I meant you have great writing talents .... just in case software
engineering doesn't work out!
"Captain Jake" <johnjac76[nospam]@comcast.net>wrote in message
Quote
In borland.public.conference, chrisC < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >wrote in
message
< XXXX@XXXXX.COM >...
>It's not too late getting certified for a Tech Reporter Job!

Huh?

--
***Free Your Mind***

 

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

Jake --
Wonderful report. Jerry Coffey should hire you as a columnist.
And how'd you find out about the CIA thing?
Nick Hodges - TeamB
Lemanix Corporation
Please always follow the newsgroup guidelines --
www.borland.com/newsgroups
 

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

Nick Hodges (TeamB) wrote:
Quote
And how'd you find out about the CIA thing?
Nick -- do you realize you posted this publicly?!?!
--
John Kaster, Borland Developer Relations, bdn.borland.com
Don't miss the best BorCon ever! info.borland.com/conf2003/
Add a feature/Fix a bug: qc.borland.com
Get source: codecentral.borland.com
 

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

On 7 Nov 2003 12:01:09 -0700, "John Kaster (Borland)"
< XXXX@XXXXX.COM >wrote:
Quote
Nick -- do you realize you posted this publicly?!?!
Doh! I thought I hit the email button!
Nick Hodges - TeamB
Lemanix Corporation
Please always follow the newsgroup guidelines --
www.borland.com/newsgroups
 

Re:Jake's BorCon Report, Part I, Written on the Way Home

"Nick Hodges (TeamB)" < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >wrote in message
Quote
On 7 Nov 2003 12:01:09 -0700, "John Kaster (Borland)"
< XXXX@XXXXX.COM >wrote:

>Nick -- do you realize you posted this publicly?!?!

Doh! I thought I hit the email button!
Heehee. My work here is done.