Newsgroup Nuggets

Newsgroup Nuggets are extracts from the various Borland newsgroups. that contain some positive or thought-provoking gems written by members of the development community.

Some Delphi Success Stories

This thread started in borland.public.delphi.non-technical with one Delphi developer relating his experiences with Delphi and how it helped him to be successful.

Just my simple Delphi story.

Thought I would share my thoughts, and express some appreciation for those who have helped over the years.

I have 2 years of a four-year Computer Engineering degree. I got burnt out for one reason or another, and never finished. I like math, chess and mind puzzles. I have a bit of a knack for them. I was not top of the class, but did well in school.

Most of my programming skills I initially learned on my own. I had classes in software, but seldom attended as the pace was way to slow.

I started in the industry I am in (I write sales tools for marketing retirement-needs related products, mostly targeted at 403(b) market, but also 401(k)) 16 years ago, written part time for a company in Portland, Oregon. Initially I wrote in MS PDS BASIC (not by my choice), but when we moved to Windows, I insistent on Delphi (to the point I put my job on the line, stating I didn't want to fail with VB). We went with it, and that was the beginning of the company really doing well.

Almost 3 years ago, I started working for a different company in the manufacturing industry. There I learned OOP method very well, and learned a lot about better methodology. I continued to work on the financial software part time (20-40 hrs/month). I recently stepped down from the manufacturing industry to work full time in the financial application.

This year has been superb. We have landed several large accounts (one with 500 units, another company with 1,000 units wanting to move up to 7,500 units) with out software. As an individual *part time* programmer (up until very recently I worked only part time), the software I have written has displaced a number of programming-teams. Companies, that are household names in America, in the insurance/retirement industry, that have own IS departments with multiple programmers working full time on their internal software, have laid their software aside, set the programmers onto different projects, and have chosen the product I have written.

And for this, I owe a lot of thanks.

Thanks to those who have made Delphi the product that it is. I have out-developed software engineering teams as a part time programmer. I don't believe I could have done this with any other product I am aware of. There have been many doubters over the years (still are :-)), but you continue to produce a product that is excellent, ignoring the antagonists.

And thanks to Team B. You do an excellent job. You have answered my stupid questions, and been patient with my learning. As I have said before, if any of you are ever in Portland, Oregon, I would enjoy buying you lunch or dinner.

Ed Dressel

Ed, congratulations and - may I join in your praise to the Borland, TeamB, TeamJEDI and other Delphi experts around here?

A couple of weeks ago I demonstrated my software - written 98% in Delphi - to a software team from a major European Satellite manufacturing company. Their eyes were sort of dropping out of their sockets when I told them that I had single-handedly built this application over a timespan of about 10 months. They were used to MS tools (for Windows, anyway); the more educated amongst them guessed very soon that I had been using Delphi (there's a particular visual flavor to the Delphi GUI's) and went from there into a phase of stubborn denial that also all the high-speed satellite telemetry processing software behind the GUI was written in a "high school student" language like Pascal. Another of their team admitted that he had suspected/expected 5-6 man years behind this software. Anyway, with all the excellent technical support around here in the delphi NGs I feel ready to take on (almost) anything with Delphi... Thanks again everybody!

Kristofer

I'm just in the middle of the project that was started in VB, and after 6 months was moved to Delphi.

My method was: let them see for themselves (2nd time this approach works for converting projects to Delphi). Then, when desperation started, they called me in and everything is working wonderfully so far. Mostly just the common problems, not crude DLL hell :).

I do this part time too, as you, so I understand you. And I strongly send you my congratulations and my sincerest wishes for good fortune in the future!

I love programming in Delphi, it's great, but the attitude in the vast majority of the people in these NGs is what makes this job really important and not just lonely coding in a dark room at midnight.

I feel a part of a whole and I thank you all for that.

> I love programming in Delphi, it's great, but the attitude in the vast majority of the people in these NGs is what makes this job really *important* and not just lonely coding in a dark room at midnight.

I feel a part of a whole and I thank you all for that.<

I agree! As a sole developer (taking on competitors with teams - and winning!) I couldn't do my job without the resources available on the 'net, particularly the newsgroups. When working in a team, you can just ask the developer next to you for an answer, but developing by yourself you don't have this luxury. With the newsgroups, and especially Team B, it is like having a team of expert developers right there with you. It is not just that people know the answer, but they are willing to spend time with me to coach me through blind spots in my knowledge when I just don't get it.

So, many thanks to -
Team B, for their time, patience, and dedication
John Kaster, for standing in the firing line between us and Borland.

Everyone, for building a community. We could so easily be secretive competitors, rather than a spirited, sharing and enthusiastic community.

Cheers,

Christopher Latta http://www.ozemail.com.au/~clatta

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is a great deal of difference.

Seconded.

Here's my little story: about 3 weeks ago I released a shareware developer's tool for Outlook (OutlookSpy) written (of course) in Delphi. Nothing very special, about 50 downloads/day. The best part is in the first week about 30% of all downloads came from Microsoft, namely from the team that wrote Outlook. What really made my day was an e-mail from one of MS developers refusing to believe that one particular feature can be implemented using the API they designed. When he learned that the tool was written in Delphi by one person (me) in about 3 weeks working on it 3 or 4 nights a week, the guy was stunned.

Thanks Borland for making my life easy and my work enjoyable! Special thanks to the guy (who are you?) who came up with an idea of TFrame.

If only VB/VC++ people knew what they are missing... Oh well, too bad for them, makes it easier for us to stand out.

Dmitry

http://www.dimastr.com/

P.S. I guess hundreds of people can share a story like this one. Why not have a page on Borland's site for all the undecided people to read? A hundred small stories sure beats 2 white papers...

Sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?

Ed,

Can you make a list of the books and any items of significant interest that you have used in order to become a good programmer? Any magazines that you read that you think have been valuable?

Greg

> Can you make a list of the books and any items of significant interest that you have used in order to become a good programmer? Any magazines that you read that you think have been valuable? <

- Being a member of an engineering team that had one member who understood good OOP. I am an observer and learned via him. (He doesn't talk much, but is an excellent developer). Towards that end, if you find a job that has good engineers and it pays less then a job that has poor engineering, in the long run it may do good to take the lower paying job, if you are willing to learn from those who are doing it right.

- The critical issue for me to learn was good OOP.

- I saw a post a while ago (year, two years, I can not remember) in this newsgroup that gave their tips on development style. I followed the rules in there, and my coding speed, readablity, etc increased dramatically. (And you know, I lost that post. It was a great thread about programming tips).

- I got a job assignment at work to write a web-based reporting tool. I used Digital Metaphors Report Builder. Using it in ways it hadn't been used before, I ended up digging in their code a lot. I learned a lot from their code: Class registering, keep-methods-short, good OOP principals, et al. I think they do a great job in structure. (I know there are others who disagree). I learned so much from that that when it came to the teams next project, I designed and wrote 60-70% of the code, even though there were 3+ full time engineers on the project. Also, in this project I got the liberty of spending 2 weeks just designing the application (a very large app, I should say). That was the best time spent on the app.

- The newsgroups were invaluable. Unfortunately, people are asking the how-to questions, not the philosophy questions. Don't be afraid to ask structure questions. Some may laugh, but it is the most important part of good code, and if anyone mocks your question, they may not understand how important structure is.

- Structure of coding is 80% of the game. Getting the right structure is very important. If the structure is right, later editing will be a lot easier. It is a pain, and time consuming, but if I find a structure problem, I take my time, restructure things correctly and then move on. If I don't do this, and use a patch-work methodology, eventually it will come back to bite me. So I am a little slower at first, but in the end, a whole lot faster.

HTH,

Ed Dressel

--- End of Newsgroup Nuggets ---

What's the secret of your success?

If you have a success story with one of our development tools, please add a comment to this article. Everything you write can help convince additional people to contribute or look at the product you're using, which simply enriches the community and increases its wealth of knowledge.

Live long, and code well

John Kaster, Inprise/Borland Developer Relations