Aloha C++0x
There is something significant happening on Hawaii’s Big Island. No, Kilauea is not erupting again. However, the event taking place will have an impact for years to come. The ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC22/WG21 - C++ Standards Committee is meeting in Kona this week. In order to meet their goal of delivering C++0x in 2009, they must walk out of the meeting with an approved complete draft of the language and library standard ready for first public review. I was skeptical at first when several members of our team told me they "had" to go to Kona for a week. However, once I saw what was on their plate for the week, my envy quickly turned to sympathy.
C++ luminary Alisdair Meredith, who recently joined CodeGear, is heading up the delegation for BSI and representing CodeGear’s ANSI seat at the meeting. Joining Alisdair (from CodeGear) are Allen Bauer and Dawn Perchik. Check out Allen’s blog for a daily update on the proceedings.
Alisdair will be hosting a live webcast on October 9th with a full debrief of the meeting, as well as answering questions about CodeGear’s C++ Builder product. If you have a passion for C++ programming, you won’t want to miss this session with Alisdair
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Posted by Jim Douglas on October 3rd, 2007 under Uncategorized | Comment now »Super Happy . . .
For those of you in Silicon Valley, I ran across a great group the other day call SuperHappyDevHouse (http://superhappydevhouse.org/). It’s a group that organizes a series of events for passionate technologists to get together, share ideas, meet new like minded people . . . and have fun. The DevHouse is trying to “resurrect the spirit of the Home Brew Computer club.” For those of you who aren’t old farts like me and are not familiar with the HBC, it was a local group started by Gordon French and Fred Moore in the mid-seventies. Some of the original members of the HBC included Adam Osborne, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak. Our very own David I was an early member of the Southern California Computer Society, which was a like minded group in So Cal (as I’m sure you could have guessed by the name) in the mid-seventies as well.
Given they are not interested in having sales / marketing “pukes” attend (my words, not theirs) . . . I told the three amigos who organize the events that I was the last guy in the world they would want at the DevHouse. . . but that I thought it was a cool idea and would to like to help them out in some way.
If live in or are visiting the valley, go to the web site and check it out. The next event is tomorrow in Los Gatos. Show up, have a beer or two, eat some chicken wings, learn something new, and meet some great people!
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Posted by Jim Douglas on August 10th, 2007 under Uncategorized | 2 Comments »Spasibo!
I want to (once again) thank our Moscow Delphi Community Leaders for taking the time to meet with me during my visit to Moscow last week. After speaking to a group of ~200 Delphi and C++ developers at a CodeGear sponsored seminar, I had the pleasure of spending a couple of hours with our Community Leaders. It was a great opportunity to learn more about the Russian market and discuss the current and future state of Delphi. Roadmaps were of course a topic of hot discussion in the seminar and in my breakout meeting with the Community Leaders. The Delphi and C++ Builder roadmaps are now posted on the CodeGear Developer’s Network. Per the plan I articulated in my blog posting on roadmaps, JBuilder and InterBase roadmaps will follow shortly. In addition, a separate, more detailed C++ Builder will be posted as well. Das Vadanya!
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Posted by Jim Douglas on June 11th, 2007 under Uncategorized | 1 Comment »Drivin’ That Train . . .
Sorry . . . I couldn’t help myself. I had to make the Dead reference given I wanted to talk about Rails!
I had the opportunity to spend about six hours at RailsConf 2007 in Portland last week. Great experience! The show was attended by 1,600 absolute zealots. I arrived at the conference midway through David Heinemeier Hannson’s keynote address. The level of energy and passion in the room (at 9:00 a.m.) during his talk and throughout the day reminded me a lot of the Java community a decade ago. It was quite a contrast from JavaOne (which I attended a week earlier) that was good . . . but so mainstream.
It’s going to be very interesting to see how the market evolves over the next couple of years. If anyone out there attended the show, I’m interested in your feedback on the event and the direction Ruby and Rails are moving.
We were very visible at the show. In addition to Joe McGlynn’s presentation (”Ten Cool Things I Learned on the Path to Rails Enlightenment”), we demonstrated our upcoming IDE for Ruby on Rails development. Check out Steve Trefethen or Joe’s blogs for more info on the product and the beta program.
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Posted by Jim Douglas on May 23rd, 2007 under Uncategorized | 5 Comments »Product roadmaps on the way . . .
The day I started at CodeGear, I got peppered by folks inside the company about publishing product road maps. I subsequently held two Community Chats later in my first week and got pummeled by customers regarding our lack of published road maps. My response to both constituencies was "I got it, we’re on it." It’s taken us a little longer than I would have preferred, but I think Michael Swindell and I have finally wrestled the beast to the ground.
We will begin posting road maps for each of our major product lines in early June (2007). Delphi will be the first road map published, with road maps for the other products in the CodeGear portfolio to following shortly thereafter.
In general, a view of a vendor ’s focus for the future is obviously very important to current and prospective customers . . . and it’s unacceptable that we were not providing visibility into our road map for a significant period of time. The mixed messages that have been sent to the marketplace regarding the future of "The Developer Tools Group at Borland," "Devco", and finally CodeGear only served to exacerbate the situation. I get it, and we’re on it!
Like most topics, the vast majority of the emails I received from customers on the topic . . . constructively, yet strongly, reiterated the importance of product road maps. A small minority of emails included comments like "We’re tired of you hiding behind SOX." I’m paraphrasing, because the comments were usually stated with much more colorful language. As I stated above, the fact they we had a significant gap in publishing road maps in unacceptable. With that said, the issues facing all software companies regarding road maps are revenue recognition related, not SOX related. Most software consumers would say "Hey, that’s your problem, not mine. Where’s my road map?" Fair enough! If anyone is actually warped enough to care about the hardships us poor software companies face regarding product road maps, do a little research into AICPA Statement of Position No. 97-2 (commonly referred to SOP 97-2). If you want a little light bed time reading, check out KPMG’s riveting overview of SOP 97-2 at http://www.us.kpmg.com/microsite/attachments/2005/SoftwareRevRecognitionBook2005.pdf. It’s a fascinated read for one and all!
Bottom line . . . we haven’t met your expectations. I get it, we’re on it. You will hear more from Michael soon on where they will be posted [they don't trust me with the details].
out for now . . .
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Posted by Jim Douglas on May 21st, 2007 under Uncategorized | 21 Comments »Not Qualified to Blog . . .
Apparently, I’m not qualified to blog from United Airlines lounges at major international airports. I loved the comments in response to the inept formatting skills on display in my "On The Fence" posting. My favorite was:
"That was some pretty fantastic formatting there Jim"
Guilty as charged. I guess I should have listened more carefully when Anders was training me! My second favorite quote was:
"Jim should kick the current website admin’s ass and get Steve in charge of the blogging experience"
First of all, it was total pilot error on my part. It had nothing to do with the website’s usability. Secondly, wouldn’t you rather have Steve writing code rather than making life easier for inept bloggers like me? I personally want him making more Delphi magic . . . and I’ll pay more attention to Anders in the future!
sincerely . . . unqualified blogger
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Posted by Jim Douglas on April 25th, 2007 under Uncategorized | 6 Comments »On The Fence . . .
Make that on the Wall. Im on my way back from a quick trip to Beijing . . . if there is such a thing. If youre not doing business with or in China, you will be soon or you wont be in business much longer. This country has been on a mission for many years now, and with the upcoming Olympic Games around the corner its in overdrive. One of my meetings was at Beijings Software Science Park. Its a 343 acre facility that has enough building capacity to house 30,000 engineers. Theyre about to break ground on phase II which will be just as big as phase I . . . and they have five sister parks in other major cities. Its amazing to witness the transformation of the economy occur around you every hour of every day. The energy is contagious. With that said, there are still significant challenges to doing business over here. When the primary revenue source for most software companies is still anti-piracy programs, you know there is a ways to go. However, Im confident steady progress on that front will be made based on what I was able to observe first hand.
I had a chance on Wednesday afternoon to make my first visit to the Great Wall. For those of you who havent had the pleasure of walking upon the wall, its truly a surreal experience. Youre transported from the hustle and bustle of Beijing into ancient china the minute you step foot on the sacred stones. We explored the Mutianyu section of the wall. It plays second fiddle to the famous Badaling Section, but its nice because its not overrun with dumb tourists (like me). I was proud of my fellow CodeGearHeads. I decided it would be a great idea to blast up a steep section of the wall. Much to my surprise, I discovered much of our AsiaPac team was dumb enough to follow me up the hill. Everyone survived the trek, although I was worried a couple folks might not make it back alive (not naming any names Tim J!). It was fun standing on the top of the hill gasping for air together. We got some great pictures to prove we made it!
I want to thank everyone who responded to my first blog regarding our intended focus on customer first experience. In addition to numerous blog responses, I received a lot of email directly as well. The emails were a combination of good, detailed observations of our points of failure today, mixed in with a number of messages from (justifiably) pissed off customers. If you fell into the later category and I didnt get back to you personally yet, please reach out to me again. We obviously have a lot of work to do in the areas of product procurement, fulfillment, registration, installation, and documentation. Jeff W. is mapping out an end to end schema of a customers experience with CodeGear and our products (which should be done by the time I get back). He is then going to lead a number of cross functional teams to start attacking areas where we are performing at an unacceptability today. My guidance for proposed projects was they had to be fairly short in duration, have a highly visible positive impact on our customers, and reduce cost or improve time to revenue for CodeGear. When I get back and have a chance to review his proposal for the first projects, Ill either capture them in my blog or have him start up his own so you have insight into what we are up to. I ask folks in the Community to be vocal once you get visibility into the projects such that we prioritize correctly. On the documentation front, Dee E. just joined the team and is the process of mapping a game plan for overhauling our current content and development processes. Ive asked her to provide visibility into her vision via a blog as well, so you will be seeing her in blogland soon.
I missed my sons Little League game on Friday night, but got a recap from him on the phone before I got on the plane today. They apparently had an exciting come from behind victory. I get off the plane on Saturday morning, drop off my bags, and head out to watch my daughter compete in an equestrian event (I think its a Dressage, but it might be Hunter/Jumper). Sleep TBD!
Out for now . . .
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Posted by Jim Douglas on April 21st, 2007 under Uncategorized | 8 Comments »AND WHAT A WEEK IT WAS . . .
When I took the reigns (as CEO) from the capable hands of Ben Smith, everyone internally and externally had the same question for me . . . Are you going to blog? It took me a week, but Im blogging!
So if it took me a week to start blogging, what the heck have I been doing you ask? I had three primary goals for my first week:
1. Get immersed in the technology - I spent much of the week asking poor, unsuspecting members of our development team to pick up a pen, get to the white board and start drawing. Getting grounded in how our products work from the bottom up (i.e. really understanding the architecture) gives me the context for everything I still need to learn about our business.
2. Talk to customers The highlight of my week was conducting two Community chats. I need to sync up with David I. and John K. on a plan to do this regularly. Im not accustom to having such a great forum for direct customer feedback, so I look forward to hosting chats fairly regularly.
3. Provide the CodeGear team visibility into my initial priorities . . . without scaring the hell out of them!
Ill tell you more in future blogs about all five of the themes I communicated to the team. However, Id like to share one of the five today that is extremely important to me . . . and that I need feedback on from the Community. As a company, I want to develop a core competency is something I call first experience. How I explained this to the CodeGear team is as follows. All too often, software companies define quality only in terms of code coverage and test metrics. Thats not where quality begins for the users of our products. Your first quality experience occurs when you attempt to order a product, register it, install it, etc. Too many companies dont think about quality in terms of the entire user experience. I know as an electronics consumer I get very annoyed when my first experience is poor. I discussed this concept with the team during our initial all hands meeting. Later in the week when I learned it often requires support personnel to help customers register our products, it was clear we have a long way to go. The good news is, everyone was pleased to hear this was one of my top priorities and are anxious to begin the journey. Now that Ive made it public, theres no turning back.
Id love to get feedback from folks in the Community on where we can improve your first experience. Feel free to post comments on my blog or send me email at jd@codegear.com.
Its going to take me awhile to get my blogging mojo. I dont have a definitive plan on how frequently Ill be in blog mode, but I will try to make it fairly frequent.
Im off to Beijing next week to meet with customers and our AsiaPac team. Allen Bauer just finished a death march across most of Asia for a variety of customer meetings, so look to his blog for highlights. Despite missing my wife and kids while Im on the road, I always look forward to getting out of the office to meet with customers. Look for China highlights in my next blog.
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Posted by Jim Douglas on April 10th, 2007 under Uncategorized | 30 Comments »
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