In amongst the hustle of software development we at Embarcadero were all brought to a standstill at the recent news that Charles “Charlie” Calvert had passed away. Known to a great swathe of Delphi and C++Builder developers through his books, Charlie, as most called him, was a man who we could all say, “he was a totally nice guy”. Over and over again, as the news percolated across the various departments, colleagues, and friends of Embarcadero, this was the recurring thing that cropped up – Charlie was universally liked, respected, and yes, a thoroughly nice guy.
Photo of the bookshelf in Marco Cantùs office with well worn copies of various books by Charlie in prominent position
Any biography of Charlie always lists him as programmer and writer, often mentioning his time during the formative years of Borland where he carried out various duties including some stellar work on the support team and product advocacy, but he would describe himself, as it says on his GitHub profile as “a retired teacher at Bellevue College specializing in building web technologies with JavaScript”. This fails to mention the quite overwhelming number of books he authored, most of which are considered “must have” seminal works.
Beyond his book writing, much of which he carried out with his wife Margie, Charlie also taught hundreds, possibly thousands, of people to write code and how the art of software development should be done. He was a consummate teacher of several subjects and even had a direct and very real influence on the choice of careers for some of our own colleagues. He wrote for multiple technical publications and magazines and presented at uncountable numbers of conferences and seminars.
For many the idea of a legacy comes in the form of financial security, property, or tangible possessions, but Charlie’s legacy is in his quite extraordinary ability to inspire, to teach, and to lead by example a whole army of software developers, present and future. His books on Delphi taught me personally a great deal, and they still have much to offer several decades on from their first appearance. When our team were discussing Charlie’s passing one after another people offered up incidences of how he had said this, or done that, or had played a part in their path of software development. You can still find Charlie’s Delphi and C++ books on sale at Amazon. A few of them are listed here: delphi-books.com/en/Charlie-Calvert.html
It is through the ways we touch people’s lives that we can live on forever, and, though Charles Calvert may have left us physically, for those whose paths crossed his – either in person or through his words and actions – he will never truly be gone.
Some words from friends and colleagues
I have been in touch with Charlie for many years and I have very fond memories of him. In the early days of Delphi, he was one of the product evangelists, along with David I, and he wrote a series of very popular books about Delphi. He was a frequent speaker at conferences and events, including the Borland Conference, of course, and I was always eager to listen to his sessions. As a fellow book author and conference speaker, I learned a lot from Charlie, and I think he was instrumental in promoting Delphi to its huge success in the early years of the product.
When I joined Embarcadero, Charlie was already working at Microsoft, but having maintained a good relationship with him, I ended up visiting a couple of times in more recent years in Seattle. He was involved in teaching technology and programming, in particular, to young students and his passion for this was very visible when he was talking about this activity. The Delphi community owes a lot to Charlie, and I personally do.
Marco Cantù, Product Lead, IDE & Tooling
One of the nicest people I ever met – RIP Charlie
Vincent Parrett, CEO, VSoft Technologies Pty Ltd
It is with a very sad heart I heard today that Charlie has passed away. Many of you would know Charlie Calvert, either from his books, from conferences or from his posts on the old Borland newsgroups.
He was one of the loveliest humans you could ever hope to meet. Funny, kind, accepting, warm hearted, always genuinely interested to hear what you’d been doing. We lost one of the good ones today..
He really was. Not sure I ever heard him say a bad word about anyone…well, maybe except Bill Gates. And even then, it was mostly restricted to wasting a few GUIDs (a finite resource, as he would remind us) as a small protest, whenever he needed to generate one.
Malcolm Groves, Founder and Principal, Code Partners
We (EMBT) were told a little after Charlie passed, and everyone was profoundly sad to hear the news. Very, very poignant moment for reflection on a life well-lived. He was an absolute legend. What an awful loss of a truly decent man.
Ian Barker, Developer Advocate, Embarcadero Technologies
Steve Teixeira (a Borland alum) sent a message telling me that my dear friend Charlie Calvert passed away that Tuesday night. Charlie had previously beaten cancer in the back of his tongue area a few years ago. He had recovered, so it was a very sad personal note to hear he had passed. I will miss my “brother separated at birth”.
David Intersimone, “David I”, Long time Borland Manager, champion of all things Delphi and C++, and ‘semi retired’ developer
Charlie was the one who introduced me to Delphi, back when he came to my Software Engineering class to show the advantages of RAD development with Delphi 1. Most of the class was floored with the ease to produce a GUI app that would have required us using many complex WinAPI functions to construct. It was also when I decided that I wanted to work on that product. Indeed, very sad.
Calvin Tang, Program Manager, Idera Software, Embarcadero Technologies.
On behalf of the entire Embarcadero team.
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I read and really used his book Delphi 2 Unleashed for several years, which always helped me in clarify doubts and gave me useful insights to solve code issues. Thanks Charlie! RIP.