Tag: community

Categories
News

Delphi Live! 2010 – Call for Papers

I am looking forward to seeing everyone at Delphi Live! 2010 in San Jose!  This is an email I just received . . .

With the great success of the inaugural event in 2009, Delphi Live! is coming back to San Jose from May 17-20.  UPDATE: New dates announced.

We are looking forward to another great gathering for Delphi developers from all over the world and to meeting you again in that area where Delphi history has been written – and we want to celebrate with you, of course, Delphi’s 15th birthday!

Please accept our invitation to submit session proposal for this great community event. Here is some basic information as well as the Call for Papers!

>> Conference Dates:
Main Conference: May 18 / 19
Pre Conference Tutorial: May 17
Post Conference Tutorial: May 20

UPDATE: New dates announced.

>> Conference Location: San Jose

>> Tracks

  • Architecture / Design
  • OOP
  • Database
  • IDE, Tools & Components
  • Core Development
  • Basics / Fundamentals
  • Native Delphi
  • Delphi Prism
  • Delphi & .NET
  • Delphi & Web
  • Delphi & PHP

>> Call for Papers:
Please submit your proposals by February 24, 2010 at
http://delphilive.com/input

If you already have a log in to this website, you can use it. If not, registration only takes you a few seconds.

>> Sessions:
Sessions are 75 minutes. It’s possible to divide a session in an introduction and a sequel.

>> Target Groups:

  • Software developers
  • Software architects
  • Project managers
  • Consultants
  • IT managers
  • Trainers

>> Misc:

  1. Accommodation will be covered based on the contribution of each speaker to the conference.
  2. You have free access to all sessions and tutorials.
  3. It is mandatory for each speaker to give at least 2 talks.

We are looking forward to meeting you in San Jose!

Categories
News

Delphi Legends 2009 Community Award

Community NomineeJohn Thomas of Wings-of-Wind.com started a community poll. Originally he was calling it the Spirit of Delphi award, but then it was pointed out that the Spirit of Delphi is awarded by the Delphi R&D team. Well John didn’t let this discourage him, so he renamed it the Delphi Legends Community Award.

John kicked off the poll process by nominating Zarko Gajic of Delphi.About.Com and Peter Below of TeamB. Then the community nominated a number of others, including myself. Just being nominated among such other great Delphi legends is quite an honor.

In the end around 500 developers voted and I received 11% of the votes, ending up with 4th place, making me a Nominee. The other winners are:

Other nominees include

Also Primoz Gabrijelcic won the nobility prize for encouraging other to vote for Peter Below.

Be sure to check out the interviews with a number of the winners, including me.

Categories
News

The Stack Overflow Delphi Badge

I consider this pretty exciting news.  As of today Stack Overflow has awarded it’s first Delphi badge for users who earn 400 upvotes on questions tagged Delphi.

Stack Overflow's Delphi badge

I was actually quite surprised to be the first to receive it.  Ever since Stack Overflow started I really wanted to see Delphi listed as one of the top category tags and badges.   As of today it is one of twenty specialist badges and the 46th most common tag (not including the 13 variations like VCL, Delphi2009, Delphi-Prism, etc.) with 1,104 questions.

I am very pleased with the wonderful Delphi community that makes it so fun to be a part of the site. I am frequently surprised with how fast someone answers a Delphi question before I get a chance too.  I am sure others feel the same way.  I look forward to seeing a lot of other community memebers earning their Delphi badge.  It is by far my favorite badge.  Who could ask for something better to be associated with!

I’ve considered adding a Stack Overflow category to my blog.

BTW, for anyone wondering where this week’s podcast with Nick Hodges is, we were planning to record it on Thursday which happens to be the day the vandals cut the fiber leading to silicon valley.  Now Nick is moving from Delphi Product Manager to Delphi R&D Manager.  I am still trying to get him on again for a podcast, I am just not sure when or what that will look like yet.

Categories
News

Lino Tadros’ Gift of Life

Previous Delphi community member Lino Tadros lives after his heart stopped and came out of a stroke induced comma on Christmas day. He is home and recovering now.

After you read his post and wish him well, tell someone who is special to you that you love them and count your blessings.  I know too many people who have lost a loved one in an instant like that before.  Count your blessings today, give thanks to God, and remember what is important.  As much fun as Delphi development is, take a break and hold your kids, hug your spouse, call your mom, etc.  Delphi will only get better why you are away.

The fact the sun rose this morning and I am still breathing is a great miracle.  The rest is beyond belief.

Categories
News

Torry’s Updates

I remember when I was getting started in Delphi programming (I started late with Delphi 2 as a long time Turbo Pascal developer) and I discovered the huge catalog of mostly free components on Torry.net I thought I was in heaven.

Not only is Torry’s still updating with new components, tools, code samples and applications (see the list of updates in the last 7 days) they just updated their footer to include the following:

The Ultimate Source of Object Pascal and Delphi Programming Knowledge.

That should shift some more of their 19,900 pages about Delphi onto the TPCI.  Previously only 35 pages contained the phrase “Delphi programming”.  That is a boost of up to 19,865 pages (depending on how many Google and other search engines index.)

Categories
News

Delphi Keeps Climbing

Last month Delphi was back in the top 10 for the TIOBE Programming Community Index for September. Well the numbers for October are out, and Delphi has kept on moving to position #9.  It bumped JavaScript.

I truly believe we are in the Delphi Renaissance.

The way the TIOBE Index works is it looks for the phrase “Delphi programming” in various searches.  Then compares the numbers for all the languages it indexes.  So be sure you say “Delphi programming” in your pages that are talking about Delphi, instead of some shorthand that doesn’t meet that search criteria.

That is why I have Delphi programming in my subtitle here.  Then I know it is on every page.

Call to Action

  1. Update your blog or web site to say “Delphi programming” on every page.
  2. Contact the authors of other Delphi blogs to remind them to do the same.
  3. Include the phrase Delphi programming in forum posts you might make.
  4. Contact people behind other Delphi related web sites and remind them to do the same.

Together we can take #8 in November! (And in the US you thought November was just about the presidential election!)

Update: If you update your site or blog to say “Delphi programming” on every page, leave a link here, and add a comment to your blog so others will see it and do the same.  If you look, C# is in number 8, and it wasn’t that long ago that Delphi was ahead of C#.

Categories
News

Caused Stack Overflow

There is a new programming community site on the internet today.  It has been in beta for a while, but today it is open to the public.  The site is Stack Overflow and it is the brain child of Jeff Attwood and Joel Spolsky.  If you are software developer who reads blogs then you have most likely heard of them and read their work.  

Think of Stack Overflow as a combination of a Wiki with a Forum.  There is a little bit of Digg / Reddit thrown in and a touch of a blog.  Here is Jeff’s Venn diagram to explain it:

So that little asterisk in the middle.  Everything is tagged, so you can filter for only the Delphi questions.  It is pretty active and sometimes it is good to see how the other side lives.  There is a pretty good community forming already.  

I am trying to keep an eye on the Delphi questions, there are currently 37 of them, but I occasionally check out other topics too.  It doesn’t replace CodeGear’s forums (which now have an accept answer feature) but I like the fact it is much more focused to being on the topic of a question and an answer and less on a discussion.

So far I have seen some past guests on our podcast there including both Nick Hodges and Barry Kelly.  When will I see you out there?  Put a link in the comments.  I’ll be sure to vote up most Delphi questions and good answers too.

Categories
News

TIOBE: Delphi in top 10 again after strong comeback

The TIOBE prorgamming langauge index is reporting that Delphi programming is in the top 10 again in September after a strong comeback.  As always it is still a grade A rated language.  It is great to see it back in the top 10.  I guess that Embarcadero marketing is paying off.

What the TIOBE index does is look across all the search engines to find hits that reference different programming languages.  For ever page it finds that says “Delphi programming” it considers that page to be related to Delphi.  It then weights it all and provides a ranking.

Both the Delphi programming langauge and the Pascal programming language (which might include Object Pascal since they don’t filter that) jumped 4 places since September of 2007.  I would think they should combine Delphi and Object Pascal.  Not sure how much of a difference that would make.  Interestingly the detail page on Delphi says the lowest it has ever been (since 2001) was 12th place, but the main page says it was 14th last year.  One of the two is wrong.  I don’t recall Delphi being the 14th, so maybe I am reading it wrong now.

Hat tip to Esteban Pacheco for the lead.  I usually check TIOBE, but I guess I forgot to.