Top 12 things most developers believe in…
Programmers rule the world. We have been improving what we do for more than 50 years. Software is at the center of the modern economy. What do we believe in (as it relates to what we do)? Here is my top twelve list of things that I believe in (as a programmer).
- I can write programs faster and better than anyone else.
- I deserve more respect and more money.
- I am not a common laborer.
- I can write any type of program, regardless of the language, runtime, platform, operating system, whatever.
- The “perfect” programming language/tool has not been created (yet).
- I am the same and different from all other programmers.
- Programming is best done individually and in small teams.
- Most of my family and friends don’t understand what I do.
- I don’t need to document my programs (the code is the documentation).
- Programming is an artistic and skillful endeavour.
- We (developers) are a fraternity of craftspeople.
- We (programmers) practice dark Computer Science arts that are handed down from generation to generation.
This is not (by any means) the definitive list. The Manifesto for Agile Software Development has a wonderful (and concise) list of values. Care to add your “developer beliefs”?
BTW, Happy April Fool’s Day 2007.
April 2nd, 2007 at 12:27 am
Hi, David! Nice First April’s joke :))) Though I recognize myself in almost all of the points.
April 2nd, 2007 at 7:04 am
Hi David. I apologize for the off-topic post, but I have been trying to get Installation & Registration help for Delphi for PHP and the proper site for submitting these issues keeps giving me Internal Server Error. I hope someone there will be able to investigate. Thanks.
April 2nd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
>Installation & Registration help for Delphi for PHP - Internal Server Error…
There was an issue on Friday and Saturday regarding the product registration services. I am told this is now working again. Please retry. Thanks
April 2nd, 2007 at 1:33 pm
(apparently unrelated) survey:
Q1. What operating system and size of diskettes tp1 came to this world?
A1. CP/M, 8.25”
Q2. What was the filename and extension of the very first IDE ever created?
A2. turbo.com
Q3. Which TP release was the first one introducing uses/units?
A3. TP4
Q4. Which TP release was the first one to implement OOP? What was missing?
A4. TP5.5 (classes used to be named "objects") and what was missing was Turbo Vision (that is, no class hierarchy was shipped in the box)
Q5. Which TP release was the coolest and best seller one?
A5. None. Actually, it was called BP7 (stands for Borland Pascal 7) and was able to create, DOS, DPMI & Windows apps with one code base!
Q6. What happened with our TP pointers in delphi?
A6. Pointers stared to be self-derefenciated in D1 (in an attempt to make everything look more like VB)
Q7. Who is Frank Borland?
A7. Cannot answer this question… Ask Him!
Q8. What kind of problems one had to fight with, while migrating from D1 to D2?
A8. Win32 API.
Q9. BCB skipped a release, which one?
A9. There was never a BCB2.
Q10. Which was the very first BCB release with code completion?
A10. 3
Q11. Which is the closest language to the soul of .NET framework?
A11. Borland Delphi.NET (and not C#!). Why? Because the framework itself is philosophically closer to VCL than to any other Microsoft abstraction (MFC, etc)
Q12. Mr Kahn and Bill used to have a mutual agreement, not to hire each other employees. This agreement used to be renewed twice a year. Bill hired some Borlanders and Phillipe phone him and said "Bill, I thought we had an agreement". What was Bill’s answer?
A12. Bill said "well, you better check, cause it just expired, yesterday"…
Q14. Which framework is the only one in the world allowing a super smooth migration from native (win32) to managed (.net) code?
A14. VCL! because one could not migrate MFC or VB6 code to .NET without rewriting it…
Q15. Is Object Pascal / Delphi a case insensitive language?
A15. Yes and no. No, because there is only one exception (implemented that way because of BCB/C++ compatibility reasons). The exception is… the Register… APIs
Q16. Which is the most flagrant omission in C#?
A16. the "whith" thingie…
Q17. Which one has more source code to offer developers? MSDN or torry.ru?
A17. Torry.ru
Q18. Was the first Turbo Pascal compiler written from scratch or inspired by other tools?
A18. Turbo Pascal 1 compiler was derived from Blue Label Pascal compiler for the Nascom-2 (written by Anders after a pascal interpreter, years before Borland was even registered as a software company)
and the list goes on…
good coding everyone!
d
April 2nd, 2007 at 2:11 pm
> Borland History Survey (trivia)
Thanks Daniel. Good stuff.
While there are a few inaccuracies and ambiguities in the questions and answers. For example:
Turbo Pascal v1.0 was delivered on one floppy disk in the following sizes/OS(s): 8" CP/M, 5.25" CP/M, and 5.25" PCDOS/MSDOS.
"very first IDE ever created" - you mean Turbo Pascal IDE right?
"Which TP release was the first one to implement OOP?" - actually it was Turbo Pascal for the Macintosh (and not Turbo Pascal v5.5).
April 3rd, 2007 at 5:30 am
Hi David. Thank you for the reply. As of 08:25 EDT this morning (4 Apr), it appears to still be broken. I have tried with both Firefox and IE. I do not see a phone number for I & R support, and I assume if I use regular support channels I will be charged, hence the unorthodox communication. Thanks for your help. -Eric
April 3rd, 2007 at 6:52 am
> As of 08:25 EDT this morning (4 Apr), it appears to still be broken
What URL are you going to for your Delphi for PHP Installation & Registration Help?
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:32 am
Wow, you are getting back to the spirit of developers (and the original spirit of Borland)… Nice posting.
April 4th, 2007 at 5:17 am
David, in order to answer your question I tried it again this morning, screen printing each page so I could list the trail of URLs, and this time it seems to have worked. So I guess the problem is fixed, whatever it was, and I thank you for your help. -Eric