[DUG] The Sons of Khan and the Pascal Spring

[Gary T. Benner]

[Reply]

HI all,

At 11:52 on 17/01/2012 Steve wrote 
>I wonder how many actually remember Philip Khan.

And his saxophone, and the impromptu "gigs" at Borland conferences in the very early days.

His name is actually Philippe Kahn, and his Wikipedia page makes interesting reading. ( Get it before the blackout!! ) Born in France, and educated in Switzerland, he has a masters Degree in Mathematics & Musicology (Classical Flute), and is credited with creating the first camera phone integrated with the net, and creating the software for the MICRAL - the first microprocessor based PC.

Then there was his employment of Anders and his Turbo Pascal ... the rest is more current history.
 
For the record: Philippe's 3 Rules of Software Craftsmanship

Rule #1 - "Start with a vision"
Rule #2 - "Throwing more bodies at software projects only makes things worse"
Rule #3 - "There are three vectors that drive software craftsmanship: quality, schedule, and features. The challenge is that you only get to pick two"

Philippe's Law on Software Development Productivity

The law states that the productivity of a software developer in a team of N people is diminished by dividing it by the cube root of N


cheers

Gary




>
>Steve
>
>On Tuesday, 17 January 2012, Stefan Mueller <muellers at orcl-toolbox.com>
>wrote:
>> Just found it on "The Register" today and thought it makes for an amusing
>(but a bit longwinded) read:
>>
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/16/verity_stob_sons_of_khan_2011/
>>
>>
>>
>> The woes of Techdom
>>
>> 1.      And it came to pass that the seasons rose and fell, and financial
>crisis waned while new financial crisis waxed, and the Kimjongilia flower
>did wither and fade on the vine.
>>
>> 2.      But misfortune struck the code cutters of Java, who were still on
>their never-ending pilgrimage to the land of Lambda, whence other pilgrims
>had long since been and gone and shrunk the T-shirt.
>>
>> 3.      And they awakened one morning to discover that they no longer
>worshipped the Sun god, but now did owe their allegiance unto the Mighty
>Beard. Bummer.
>>
>> 4.      But the Sharpers of Dotnet were also troubled, especially the
>cult of Silver Light. And they looked fearfully upon the antics of the high
>priest of the Softies, saying: What the blazes doth Fester think he playeth
>at?
>>
>> 5.      However, the Sharpers were laughing compared with the fate of the
>tribe of Flashinites. For the departed god Steve had cursed them with
>a great curse.
>>
>> 6.      And He had stationed a cherubim with a flaming sword which turned
>every direction to guard the way to the store of apps, and banished them
>from the sweet money orchards of Cupertino.
>>
>> 7.      Wherefore the king of the Flashinites, that is called Adobe, did
>consider hard and long.
>>
>> 8.      Yeah, he considered for longer than it taketh a Dellish machine
>to reboot with yet another Acrobat upgrade.
>>
>> 9.      Then, when he had finished thinking, Adobe did ungird his loins.
>And he did conceal the sword of resistance into the scabbard of abrupt
>capitulation, and the shield of technicalleadership into the
>cupboard-under-the-stairs of user base abandonment.
>>
>> 10.   Yet even the Æsthetes, that art the disciples which loveth the
>Jesus phone the most, were discontent.
>>
>> 11.   Wherefore the language of the Æsthetes was Æbjective C.
>>
>> 12.   And this Æbjective C is about as æsthetic as the secret mouldy side
>of the last orange in the bowl, that one discovereth abruptly when one
>taketh it up.
>>
>> 13.   Yet the Æsthetes admitted this not.
>>
>> 14.   And so it went on, among all the tribes and cults and sects in the
>land of developers, there flourished the stinking weed of discontent.
>>
>> 15.   And every geek that micturateth against the wall was baffled and
>afraid.
>>
>> Opportunity knocketh
>>
>> 1.      And in those times the elders of the tribe of the Sons of Kahn
>did live in the discotheque of Embarcadearohdearohdearyme. And they looked
>out upon this chaos.
>>
>> 2.      And they saw that it was good.
>>
>> 3.      For one elder spake up in this manner: if we punt out a decent
>version of Delphi now, we could be onto a fantastic hearts-and-minds win,
>and we will enjoy the Second Coming of Pascal.
>>
>> 4.      For all we need do is make it more modern than Java, and more
>'native'-allowing-the-inference-but-certainly-not-actually-stating-faster
>than C#, and more Apple-friendly than Flash, and less hideous than
>Æbjective C.
>>
>> 5.      And targetting not only on both 32- and 64-bit Windows, but
>also Mac OS and iOS.
>>
>> 6.      So the blessed users of Delphi may loll around in the sweet money
>orchards ofCupertino.
>>
>> 7.      And little children shall once more dangle their elses in the
>limpid brook, and weave repeat/until loops from honeysuckle blossoms, and
>even declare local procedures.
>
>-- >
>Steve Peacocke
>Mobile: 0220 612-611
>Linkedin Professional
>Profile<http://nz.linkedin.com/pub/steve-peacocke/1/a06/489>
>
>
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