Sip from the Firehose

I woke up this morning at 5am.  Turned on my computer and read the press release announcing that Embarcadero closed the acquisition of CodeGear from Borland Software.  Both the Embarcadero and CodeGear web sites have a flash animation highlighting the combination of DatabaseGear and CodeGear focused on tools that let architects, designers, developers, and administrators "design it, build it, and run it".

What’s different today? This morning it was foggy and drizzly at my house south of Santa Cruz.  There was no traffic on Highway 1 North on the way to work.  Now the sun is coming out in Scotts Valley.  We are now part of a 500 person, $100 million company focused on application developers and database professionals. We now have more people and resources to innovate and help you succeed than we had yesterday. We have joined together to focus on innovation in our existing products and the creation of new solutions.

Our mission is all about building software tools. It is about providing tools that are independent (and supportive) of a platform or stack vendor’s offerings. We’re about building software tools for students, hobbyists, developers, professionals, consultants, independents, and small/medium/large/extra-large businesses.

The rate of growth and volume of information and data is incredible. Information and software drives the modern economy. Applications are needed to process and present the information. People create the applications. Twenty five years ago, at the time of Turbo Pascal 1.0, there were two million developers in the world. Today, the number of developers is growing at approximately two million per year.

Some people would tell you that tools don’t matter. That open source or the platform and stack vendors will solve every problem and satisfy every pain point. Today, software is no more reliable, no more predictable than it was before. We need to build better applications, faster, and with higher reliability. Our economy needs every designer, architect, developer, and administrator to be performing at the top of their game.

What are we focused on? Building the best tools to let you leverage the skills you are developing no matter what operating system, database, platform, stack, hardware, and architecture you are using today so that you can use those skills on the infrastructures you will be using tomorrow.

We are the “un-lock-in”. For those of you that are dependent on platforms, databases – our tools can work with you and for you. For those who have heterogeneous infrastructures or for those individuals, consultants, ISVs/Micro ISVs, SI/VARs, and OEMs who need to support multiple platforms - our tools can work with you and for you. For those developers who don’t use databases - our tools can work with you and for you.

Information Engineering and Software Engineering have now collided at Embarcadero Technologies, the largest independent provider that empowers application developers and database professionals with tools to design, build, and run software applications in the environment they choose.

How can we innovate to help you succeed? Do any of the following pain points resonate with you?

• My professionals have no independence because we are tied to a single stack (platform).
• Our team is wasting tons of time and resources with low-quality tools.
• I am an individual developer who has to build it all while competing with larger teams.
• Our team is very distributed, disjointed, and disconnected.
• My small group still has to build complex apps.
• Information Management and Software Development are in different silos at our company.
• Software tools are hard to access and expensive for my team.
• We are an ISV that needs to build quality, performant, global-ready packaged software.
• We build scientific and industrial applications pushing the envelope of non-database applications.
• We use Eclipse but waste time with different plug-ins, multiple editions, and lack best-in-class tooling for real development work.

What are your pain points?  500+ Embarcaderians are ready to help!

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I got up this morning to get ready to drive in to Scotts Valley just as I have for the past twenty-three years and 13 days.  As I was driving in, I was thinking about product videos I need to create, trips I have to plan, webinars that I need to schedule, and articles I need to write.  As I was making the transition from Highway 1 to Highway 17, it donned on me that this will be my last day as a Borlander.  Tomorrow, I will make the same drive up to Scotts Valley as an Embarcadero Technologies employee!

I knew today was coming back on February 6, 2006 when Borland announced that they would sell off the developer business.  The whole process became real with the Embarcadero definitive agreement announcement on May 7, 2008.  In the past few weeks, while continuing to help drive revenue and awareness, many of us have also been filling out Embarcadero forms for insurance coverage, 401-k retirement fund planning, and other employment forms. Yet, it was surreal to be in the car this morning thinking about technology, products, and work items without thinking about the transition.

For 23 years I have focused on developers, tools, and software engineering.  Looking forward, I will continue to focus on developers, tools, and software engineering.  The combination of Embarcadero Technologies’ DatabaseGear and CodeGear products will give individuals, consultants, ISVs, SI/VARs, OEMs, small teams, and large teams unique capabilities, from an independent software company, across the database and programming spectrum.

We are focused on moving the state of the art in software engineering forward and continuing to add to tooling that embodies the best practices and knowledge of our craft. Come along with us if you are a software engineer and information engineer who

• cares about independence (even if you are dependent on a platform or stack),
• needs increased productivity and quality (even if you are sometimes forced to use less than productive tools),
• wants to be able to collaborate with other developers, designers, and architects (whether they work on your project or are part of your social network),
• enjoys being an active member of a community (even though you might, most of the time, just be a "heads down" developer trying to get the job done).

Whenever others have left Borland, I have added them to my Borland alumni list.  Tomorrow, I will add myself to the list. With CodeGear becoming a part of Embarcadero Technologies, the transition is different.  I am not leaving Borland per se, I am joining a company with the same tools heritage, shared mission, and common vision.  As for Borland, its employees, partners, and customers, I wish you all the best of everything.

How will I feel tomorrow when I drive in to work?  Will something be different?  I’ll let you know tomorrow.

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Embarcadero runs open beta programs for its products. There are two programs running right now: PowerSQL 1.1 and DB Optimizer 1.0. 

PowerSQL simplifies SQL development for application developers with many features for improving productivity and reducing errors. A rich SQL IDE with code completion, real-time error checking, code formatting and sophisticated object validation tools help streamline coding tasks. 

Embarcadero DB Optimizer maximizes database performance by enabling developers and DBAs to quickly discover, diagnose, and optimize poor-performing SQL. DB Optimizer eliminates performance bottlenecks by discovering data intensive or frequently executed queries, focusing in on specific SQL statements through query statistics (CPU, I/O, wait times), and optimizing any problematic statements.

Links to programs and products:

http://www.embarcadero.com/pmprograms/
http://www.embarcadero.com/products/products.html

Both of these products should appeal to all CodeGear customers who care about database development and database optimization.

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I am here in Amsterdam Netherlands for our Delphi meet up at the Novotel Hotel.  CodeGear evangelist Pawel Glowacki and I are giving technical presentations.  Pawel is currently talking about VCL for the Web and dbExpress 4 architectures for Web 2.0 and Database programming.

Before the start of the seminar, I received a copy of issue #2 of the Blaise Pascal magazine.  The magazine is available in printed and download editions.  You can learn about all things Pascal and Delphi from the top authors including Bob Swart, Marco Cantu, Julian Bucknall, Hallvard Vassbotn, and Jeremy North (just to name a few).  While there is a good amount of information about Delphi programming in our product and on our developer network, I hear from developers that you need more.  Blaise Pascal Magazine gives you additional technical and how to articles of use to all Delphi and Pascal programmers.  Check it out!

Also here in the Netherlands is the Software Development Network.  SDN covers CodeGear products in their conferences, website, and SDN magazine. This October (6 and 7), SDN will have their annual Software Developer Conference 2008.  Nick Hodges, Delphi product manager, will be in attendence giving technical sessions along with additional CodeGear and community presenters.

In Germany (where I was last Saturday) there is also Entwickler (Developer) Magazine that covers technical topics for CodeGear products.  Entwickler also runs the annual EKON and European DevCon conference.  This year the EKON 12 conference is October 27-31.

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I am over in Europe visiting with developers. Last week I was in Italy and Germany at the Delphi developer days in Piacenza (Marco Cantu) and Gunzburg (LegoLand). At the end of my CodeGear and Embarcadero update presentation, I covered some of things that could be possible in the future once the two companies come together and collaborate on the integration of products and technologies.

What might be possible for next generation development environment functionality?

• SQL “insights” and “completion” in the SQL property editor and in the code editor
• Modeling your code and database in one IDE
• Stepping through code and stepping into a stored procedure
• Profiling and optimizing a database and your program
• Refactoring database and code at the same time

What else do you need/want?

These are just a small number of possibilities. In fact, the more time CodeGear and DatabaseGear R&D and Product team members spend together, the list will grow exponentially. What else should we work on together? Taking a step back from a specific programming language, specifiy product, specific platform - what else do you think the combined group could do to help you be more successful?

I am in the UK now for meet ups Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday I will be in Amsterdam. Looking forward to your comments and suggestions.

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Welcome to June.  This month CodeGear is holding many workshops, webinars, and in-person events around the world.  We have lots to show and talk about.  I hope you will be able to join us and so we can listen to your ideas and needs.  There are too many events to list in this blog, so I will just highlight a few and then give you links to event lists.  I will be travelling to Europe this month to take part of the Delphi Day in Italy and Germany.   I am also travelling to UK and Netherlands for Delphi meetings.  I hope to see you in some of the cities or online.  We are also having a series of Delphi and C++ Webinars this month in the Americas given by Michael Rozlog, Andreano Lanusse, and myself.  If you want to see additional topics covered, send an email to davidi@codegear.com and I’ll see what we can set up.

Marco Cantu’s Delphi Day in Piacenza Conference, June 12

Delphi Tage, Gunzburg Germany, June 13 and 14

CodeWay Tour 2008 of France

David I. Delphi meet up in Twyford, UK, June 17

David I. Delphi meet up in Amsterdam, Netherlands, June 18

US Webinars and Events

European Webinars and  Events

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Original post (5/29/2008):

This Saturday, May 31, at 10am Pacific Time, I’ll be appearing on the GeekSpeak program on KUSP FM radio here in Santa Cruz.  KUSP streams live on the Internet (34k mp3 stream / 128k mp3 stream).  The show will also be available as a podcast on NPR.

The description for this week show:

Software Development Tools - IDEs allow quicker and easier development of applications, but how does one go about creating a good IDE? Guest David Intersimone from CodeGear will chat with the Geeks about making software for software development.

About GeekSpeak (from the website):

GeekSpeak is a radio show broadcast live from Santa Cruz every Saturday at 10:00 am on California’s central coast public radio station, KUSP [Studios located at 203 8th Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA 95062]. Now in its eighth year, Geek Speak provides a vital, down-to-earth sharing of news and views between the tech and mainstream communities, with the goal of helping listeners better understand new technologies and the techno-babble that accompanies them.

Post updated (5/31/2008):

GeekSpeak radio:

Link to the replay for the show (mp3 format, 24.2mb)

The show is also podcast on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast.php?id=510168

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Thanks to the hard work by John Kaster, Yorai Aminov, and the CDN community development team, Social Bookmarking (tagging) is now available on the community site.   Time for all members to start tagging the articles you read.  Since this just went live, the CDN tag cloud is pretty small.  Let’s all help it grow, grow, grow !

Article about Social Bookmarking on CDN

All of the CDN help articles

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This week, CodeGear announced the availability of the Japanese language version of 3rdRail, our Ruby on Rails development environment.  A press conference was held in Japan this week to announce a business collaboration with CodeGear, Open Source Japan, and Network Applied Communication Laboratory (NaCl) to drive enterprise Ruby on Rails adoption in Japan. In the press release and conference, Yukihiro Matsumoto, the creator of the Ruby language and NaCl Fellow, said, "CodeGear has a longstanding track record in providing high-quality developer tools that increase productivity and accelerate development. 3rdRail has already proven to be a success in the US and other countries around the world; we look forward to seeing the same level of adoption in Japan. This is where Ruby started, where many developers have embraced Ruby and where we see growing use in the enterprise market."

Also this week, we posted a case study about Labrador Technologies, Inc.’s use of 3rdRail to build a secure, web-based data browser and display tool for accessing data and displaying reports.

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I will be hosting a live, online community chat (using our Interwise streaming system) discussing the recent announcement of the signing of a definitive agreement for Embarcadero Technologies’ to acquire CodeGear.  Joining me will be CodeGear CEO Jim Douglas and Embarcadero Technologies CEO Wayne Williams.

We will be discussing details of the recent announcement, what it means to CodeGear and Embarcadero customers and partners, what the two companies can accomplish together in creating the largest independent software company focused on the design, development, management, and optimization of applications and their databases. During the live chat, the CEOs will also take questions from community members.

Date, time, and registration details:

• Thursday May 22nd
• 10:00am Pacific Time (5:00pm GMT)
• Click HERE to pre-register for the online chat.

Send questions in advance:

If you’d like to send questions about the announcement in advance for Jim and Wayne, you may do so by sending an email to davidi@codegear.com.  Put the text "Question for the CEOs community chat" in the subject line of your email.

Additional information about the Embarcadero/CodeGear announcement:

• Press Release: Embarcadero Technologies® to Acquire CodeGear™ from Borland Software
• Community letter, from David I, about today’s acquistion announcement
• Customer letter from Wayne Williams, CEO Embarcadero Technologies
• FAQ
• Embarcadero Technologies Buys Borland’s CodeGear - an onStrategies update

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