DaVinci Unlimited Software

Well more of an evil Genius, but a musical none the less.  Check out Dr. Horrible from the mind of Joss Wheaton.  It is free online for a limited time, be sure to check it out.

A while back my manager asked me if the order of the enums in a Delphi case statement changed performance: i.e. Enums in order being faster then those not.  I was pretty sure it didn’t, but thought it was worth checking out.  Time for a test application and some disassembly . . .

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One of my favorite tools for software development beyond Delphi is Beyond Compare.  It is the best tool for comparing and merging files, directories, etc.  It is also written in Delphi.

They happen to have a Beta for version 3 available now.  Beyond a whole slew of new features for comparing and merging source files, they are also now running natively on Linux.  I sent them an email about the Linux support and they are using Kylix along with some GUI wrappers of their own to make development smoother.

They have a full list of the cool features in version 3, along with upgrade information.  One of the really cool features I am looking forward to is the 3-way text merge.  I also really like the image comparison plug-in they offer.

I have found it is an indispensable tool when I am moving files between one computer to another.  If the process fails part way through do to network issues or whatever, Beyond Compare effectively lets me resume where I left off.  Additionally, I can quickly see if some of the files are out of date or corrupted.  A great way to trouble shoot system differences in testing software.

• The building I work in is owned by Embarcadaro Capital Partners (See picture of the directory in the lobby.)
• Our company headquarters is moving to the corner of The Embarcadaro and Harrison in San Francisco, CA.
• The primary tool I use at work is Delphi, which was just purchased by Embarcadero Technologies.

Seems to be a theme here. . . .

It appears I am saying my good-bye to two of my old friends.  I knew this was coming on both accounts, but the reality is finally here.  First of all, I good-bye to Borland, hello to Embarcadero.  The people and products will still be there, but it is a new company.  I expect this to be a change for the best.  Now I need to figure out a way to re-brand all this Borland merchandise I own. . . .

My second old friend I bid farewell to is bsdg.org.  I registered the doman name when I took over as president of the Boise Software Developers Group back in 2000.  In that time it also became my first blog site, which I found quite enjoyable.  At my high point I broke the news about PDC 2005 thanks to an email from the organizer, and that resulted in links from Robert Scoble as well as many others.

As of October 2007 I moved away from Boise, and Chris Brandsma took over as president of BSDG.  At one point I debated changing to to the Borland Software Developers Group and keeping the domain name, but Delphi was already dropping the Borland roots at that point.  All my old blog posts are still there someplace, but they are hidden behind a wall of cryptic 404 errors provided by the ASP.NET CMS that was recently installed.  Rather sad.  Maybe I will migrate some of the content here. . . . .