Software Development Conference — Day One
17 Sep
The first day of the Software Developer Conference was fun — as I thought it woudl be.. These folks really know how to run a conference. My hats of to the great gang of friendly people that run SDC. Things are very well done.
Thoughts on the first day:
- Went to a Chad Hower talk on for Delphi programmer considering migrating to .Net I think Chad did a pretty fair job of describing what it takes to move to .Net. I think he undersold VCL.NET a bit, and I also think that he needs to take a good look at Highlander. But on the whole, it was a pretty balanced talk. For the record — we recommend that you not use the the Delphi RTL if you are planning on building an assembly to be used by C#. It’s really easy to build a ".net friendly" assembly in Delphi. You just have to follow the rules.
- I gave the Delphi Product Address for my first talk. It went a little long — I didn’t get a chance to demonstrate anything. The audience filled the room, and they asked a lot of good questions. It was nice to get a chance to talk about RAD Studio 2007. Folks seemed to really like.Blackfish, too. It’s a really cool product — and good for Delphi developers. Being able to do stored procedures and triggers with complete access to the .Net framework is a bit intoxicating, I must admit.
- I was the sidekick for Cary Jensen’s great session on dbExpress 4. What a treat to hear a talk by a guy who really gets and appreciates what is going on with dbExpress 4. The new framework is powerful and cool — and still in its infancy. The best is yet to coem — a dbExpress developer will not be left in the dust, that is for sure.
- Dr. Bob and I also got a chance to do a "Chalk Talk", which sort of amounts to the same thing as a band taking requests from the audience. I did a demo on Blackfish stored procedures in Delphi, and Bob did a demo on ECO with VCL.Net.
- You know, when you get right down to it, VCL.NET and ECO are a match made in heaven.
- So now I’m in the main hall listening to Mark Miller, Richard Campbell and Karen Greenwald to a version of Mondays. Very funny. Poor Carl Franklin had flight trouble getting over here
- Okay, so I’m a little giddy with jet lag.
Thanks for the update, sounds like a good conference.
September 17th, 2007 at 2:28 pmRick –
The thing about VCL.NET is that it’s, well, the VCL. Therefore, the large majority of the information out there about the VCL itself still applies to VCL.NET. So in a sense, it’s hard to "crow" about it, since it is already so familiar to Delphi developers.
Nick
September 17th, 2007 at 9:56 pmI have to agree with Rick. Not everyone knows that VCL.Net is essentially the VCL, and that what gets shipped with Delphi is pretty much single sourced between Win32 and .Net. Some people assume that it’s closer to CLX, and is only kind of compatible or interchangeable.
After all of the effort you guys put in, who will brag about it if not you? Bring it up in conversations and presentations, like Steve S. does in his live chats. Show practical examples. Drive the point home over and over again. By all means, crow!
September 18th, 2007 at 3:14 amIt was an very nice and informative event. i can only recommend it.
Big compliments to the speakers and the SDC team!
Bertram
September 19th, 2007 at 7:08 am(damn lucky winner of a SDC Wii)