I’ve had a few requests for my Delphi Tokyo 10.2 wallpaper that I made. I found out that while this is a picture of Mt. Fuji in the background, this photo is from the Kyoto side, not the Tokyo side. I got the photo from Pixabay, which is a great free clip art site. They have many more Tokyo, Japan and Mt Fuji themed images if you want to make your own wallpaper.
I purchased the sunglasses wearing spartan penguin from a different clipart site. The tattoo and scary eyes came from our internal creative team. I forget which one, but I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of him. You can download my Photoshop file for this wallpaper if you want to tweak it.
I wanted to share a little about HOSOKAWA Jun, our Japanese MVP. He blogs at qiita.com/pik and you can follow him on Twitter @pik.
When I was in Tokyo I got to meet HOSOKAWA Jun. We have a lot of great developers in Japan (and I met a lot of them at the event there), but many of them work at a company that doesn’t allow them to also be an MVP. Luckily Mr. Hosokawa works for SerialGames and they are happy to have him as an MVP.
Don’t let his boyish good looks fool you, he is a senior software developer who started programming with Delphi in University. He’s worked with artificial intelligence and currently has an interest in virtual reality and mixed reality. While I was talking with him at dinner he showed me some components and development tools he’s created to make mobile app development a whole lot easier.
He was involved in the development of the Saitobaru Archaeological Museum of Miyazaki Prefecture BeaconFence powered app too.
Here is a little interview I did with him so you can learn more about him (translated from Japanese)
What I do
I develop applications and games. I use mainly Unity for game development, however I develop tools, components and plugins with Delphi & C/C++.
Recently, I am often doing more innovative development beyond games and applications. For examples, I am developing applications for VR/MR (Virtual Reality / Mixed Reality) devices such as Oculus rift and HoloLens. Also developmenting more technically complex algorithms and libraries.
Where I work
I work for SERIALGAMES Inc. located in Akihabara, which is a state-of-the-art city of techno pop culture. We hope to convey cutting-edge excitement by having our headquarters there.
[Akihabara is a shortening of Akibagahara (“autumn leaf field”) after Akiba, a fire controlling deity. It is nicknamed Akihabara Electric Town (Akihabara Denki Gai). It is considered by many to be an otaku cultural center and a shopping district for video games, anime, manga, and computer goods.]
My background in development
When I was a junior high school student I started programing for the first time using BASIC. I started using Turbo Pascal 5.0 in a high school computer room. It is around this time that I also started working in assembly language and C / C++. When I entered university I studied artificial intelligence and produced evolution simulation of virtual life. I remember that Delphi 1.0 was released around this time, I was absorbed in programming. Of course, my artificial intelligence and other projects were developed in Delphi. Also, like many students, I love games and playing games when not sleeping.
And now, I am at a game production company where I can use state-of-the-art technology with artificial intelligence and virtual life technology.
What sort of development I am interested in
The technology I think that is particularly interesting recently is HoloLens / Windows Mixed Reality. When you can create HoloLens applications in Delphi there will be a lot of great apps.
What I am excited about in the future
I think mobile devices such as Android and iOS are transitional technologies.
Ten years ago, as we could not imagine the iPhone. New hardware, software, and technology will surely appear in the next decade that we can’t imagine today. And I will be very happy to develop for it with Delphi.
Talking to Sarina DuPont about her role with Embarcadero and the future of RAD Studio and the evolution of technology with automation and self driving cars.
When I started at Embarcadero, David I. asked me what I wanted my title to be. I went with Developer Evangelist since that was David’s title, and then he added Engineer on because of my years as a Software Engineer. I traveled the world and The cool thing is I’ve gotten to contribute a few pieces of code to the best development tool on the planet since joining too, so I made good on the Engineer title.
Lead World Wide Developer Evangelist and Engineer
As a Developer Evangelist I’ve alway described my job as mostly education related. My job is to help developers be awesome by educating them on our tools and the craft of software development. I figure if I can help our developers be awesome then the rest will take care of itself.
I find I am frequently educating both ways though. Sure, I focus on creating educational content for our developers, but also I’ll be in a planning meeting and I bring feedback from all the developers back to the product management and R&D teams.
So I was thinking, Evangelism is kind of a one-way thing. Sure, it is an important part of what I do, but I want to focus more on conversations and the two-way communication. So to that end I am changing my title.
Chief Developer Advocate and Engineer
In my mind Advocacy is a better description of what I do. I’ll continue to play the Embarcadero Drum like I always have (even before joining Embarcadero) but I’ll also focus on being an advocate for our developer community within Embarcadero. The more I can do to improve that two way communication the better it is for everyone.
Luckily I’m not alone in my advocacy role though. All of our Software Consultants and Support Engineers spend their days talking to you, our community, more than I do. They are regularly bringing your feedback to meetings and making suggestions. Our Product Management team is also out on the front lines, talking to customers and doing what they can to incorporate the needs of developers into our products.
A few other titles that were suggested:
Agent of Awesome Developer Technology
Master Chief Advocate
Geek Guru
Developer Rockstar
King of the Geeks
Top Nerd
Community Coordinator
He Who is Always Online
Mr. Overflowing Inbox
All of which I love, and are fairly accurate (especially the last two).
I got to sit down with some of the engineers in Tokyo to talk about C++Builder, RAD Studio and Delphi. C++Builder is big in Japan. Maybe even bigger than Delphi (which is saying a lot.) It was great to put faces with the names of these great guys who I’ve only corresponded with over email or social media before.
Aiso-san, Mohri-san & Inoue-san are all software consultant engineers. Aiso-san and Inoue-san where part of the presentation #0315inTokyo with Fujii-san and I. The 4th engineer in the back of the photo below is Kenji Umeda, a support engineer that isn’t on Twitter for me to link to.
The world of Delphi is HUGE. It love seeing all the different types of apps being built and seeing users all over the world. This week I was in Tokyo for their #0315inTokyo event announcing 10.2 Tokyo coming soon. In a surprising turn of events Eric Bonilha of Digifort from Brazil was in Tokyo on vacation too.
He stopped by the Tokyo office of Embarcadero for a quick visit. He showed off the latest version of his Digifort Mobile client and the engineers here showed him some of the things they are working on with BeaconFence for a local museum. A lot of fun.
We are all excited for the upcoming 10.2 Tokyo release adding support for Linux!
It is happenstance meetings like this that show how global Delphi and Embarcadero really are.
Last week on my channel I worked on building a REST client. If you are familiar with Delphi, it makes REST clients really, really easy, but I tried to make it a little more complicated to dive into some of the in’s and out’s of building REST clients.
Craig has a big project he is starting work on to build an API Header Auto Generator for Delphi. This will include both client and server side development. He is looking at the fantastic UniGUI web framework to power the web, so this will be a lot of fun.
This book covers Dependency Injection from A to Z. In it you’ll learn about Constructor Injection, Property Injection, and Method Injection. You’ll learn about the right and wrong way to use the Dependency Injection Container.
I still get people asking about Embarcadero offering a free or community version or Delphi or C++Builder. That is one of the big strategies of IDERA – offering good free tools. So when we joined IDERA it didn’t take long before we started offering Delphi and C++Builder Starter edition for free (or a 100% discount, depending on who you ask).