My role at Embarcadero

I have gotten quite a few requests regarding what exactly I’m doing at Embarcadero. I have elaborated quite a bit on Delphi Developer. But I fully understand that not everyone is on Facebook, and I don’t mind elaborating a bit more if that helps. So here is a quick “drive-by” post on that.

Setting sails for America

Sadly the facts of life are that I can’t talk about everything openly, that would violate the responsibility I have accepted in our NDA (non disclosure agreement), as well as personal trust between myself and the people involved. Hopefully everyone can sympathize with the situation.

My title is SC, Software Consultant, which is a branch under sales and support. I talk with companies about their needs, help them find competent employees, deliver ad-hoc solutions on site in my region and act as a “go to” guy that CTO’s can call on when they need something. And of course part of my role is to hold presentations, advocate Delphi and evangelize.

I am really happy about this because for the past 8 years I have been up to my nose in brain grinding, low-level compiler and rtl development; and while that is intellectually rewarding, it indirectly means everything else is on hold. With the release of Smart Mobile Studio 3.0 the product has reached a level of maturity where fixes and updates will be more structured. Focus is now on specific modules and specific components – which sadly doesn’t warrant a full-time job. So it’s been an incredible eight years at The Smart Company, and Smart is not going away (just to underline that) – but right now Delphi comes first. So my work on the RTL and the new compiler framework is partitioned accordingly.

Being able to advocate, represent and work with Delphi and C++ builder is a dream job come true. I have been fronting Delphi, helped companies and connected people within the community for 15 years anyways; and the companies and people I talk with are the same that I talked to last month. Not to mention new faces and people who have just discovered Delphi, or come back to Delphi after years elsewhere.

So being offered to do what I already love doing as a full-time job, I don’t see how I could have turned that down. As a teenager we used to talk about what company we wanted to work for. I remember a buddy of mine was absolutely fanatical about IBM, and he even went on to work for “big blue” after college. Others wanted to work at Microsoft, Oracle, Sun — but for me it was always Borland. And I have stuck with Delphi through thick and thin. Delphi has never failed me. Not once.

I set out to get object-pascal back on the map eight years ago. I have actively lobbied, blogged, started usergroups (our Facebook group now house 7500+ active Delphi developers), petitioned educational institutions, held presentations and done everything short of tattooing Delphi on my skin to make that a reality. Taking object-pascal out of education has been a catastrophe for software development as a whole.

Well, I hope this sheds some light on the role and what I do. I’m not a “professional blogger” like some have speculated. I do try to keep things interesting, but there is very little professional about my personal blog (which would be a paradox). But obviously my writing and presentations will have to adapt; meaning longer articles, on-topic writing style and good reference material.

I will be speaking in Oslo quite soon, then Sweden before I pop off to London in november. Very much looking forward to that. The London presentation and Oslo presentation will be hybrid talks, looking at Delphi and also how Smart Mobile Studio can help Delphi developers broaden the impact and ease web development for existing Delphi solutions. The talk in Sweden will be pure Delphi and C++ builder.

Get in touch with Jason Chapman or Adam Brett at the UK Delphi usergroup for more info