Regarding Delphi and the inexplicable lack of promotion for it:
About 5 years ago, they had a three day conference/focus group there at Borland with about ten key outside developers and most of the Borland mgmt. In one room there were people from Compaq, B of A, and several other companies, along with Intersimone, some borland marketers and key people, and the vps of development and other departments. About 20 people altogether. I was invited, through some oversight.
So, they showed us everything, asked us about everything, and most importantly, showed us Delphi while it was still in development.
Fabulous, we exclaimed! You may have screwed up and given MSFT your C++ compiler genius, you may have wasted millions on that stupid Intersimone videotape set to teach people C++ by watching tv, OWL may be complete crap, you may pay 2.50 per CD burned while everyone else pays 50 cents, (That was me, being rude, not realizing that D.I. and the guy who fired the C++ designer were in the room, sitting behind me ... ;-), yes, you may have blown all that money out your patoots, but you can make it all up with Delphi.
We oozed over the product, we drooled, we explained how people would buy this *instead* of sliced bread (We were all corporate and financial DB/C++ developers at that point.) And everybody all the way to the top heard us. They agreed too. Everybody had already had religion before we got there. And as far as I know, this was the only conference of it's type they had, so there wasn't any contradiction. Also, the later retail focus groups they had when the product was in beta confirmed all the stuff everyone thought. So it couldn't have been more clear in everyones mind that this was a product to push.
So what happened? At first they put adequate money into promotion and there was something of a splash. But slowly, slowly, the emphasis seems to have gone away from it. Despite it having the ability to be *the* key tool for many shops. The VP of software moved on, Philippe turned out to have been distracted by some stock transactions he was making, David Intersimone kept doing what he was doing.
Who knows. People spend big bucks and lots of executive time to find the right decision, they make the right decision, they do the right thing, and it's a success. Then they forget about it. Maybe it's because some other corporate gamester got to be a hero for it, so it doesn't do your career any good. Maybe they just got so shocked by what happened with Kahn, the layoffs, and so forth, that they lost their memory of what it was they had been doing. You know, kind of like, 'Hey, here I am in the kitchen, but what did I come in here for...'
Cheers,
Chaz
PS: Borland really knew how to save pennies when it didn't matter. We got to the hotel via our own transport (including airfare) to find we were supposed to pay for our own rooms, and were worked 12 hours a day for three days. For this we got one fish dinner, rolls and cold eggs for breakfast, a sweatshirt, a cup, and all the brochures we could lug. Plus a copy of Delphi so that we could hopefully sell thousands of copies to each of our very large companies. Maybe they were trying to avoid the impression of bribery or anything else improper. If so, they were stunningly successful ;0) |
