The welcome keynote opened with a rock concert theme. Mostly just a welcome out. Dale renewed his personal and Borland's commitment to the developer and writing code. "It's all about the code" was his mantra for the evening.
This is a picture from right before the keynote began. These are the same photos I used earlier, but they came out much better this time. Christine Ellis is right in the middle with the 2 screens behind the large logo, and then the large screens to either side of the stage.
Dale commented that more companies were standardizing on Borland's tools. Borland tools were involved in sending the rover to mars.
There was a really interesting presentation on the future of software metrics. They took real Star Team data and represented it in interesting ways. They used video morphs of David I, that varied from a devil to an angel, based on the measurement of change requests and code check-ins. They used midi music based on code metrics for submitted code changes. Project status was displayed with ambient orbs. There were a number of the creative ways of looking at development team data.
I actually got a chance to visit with David I. later in the computer lab. He said that the demo actually used real data from Star Team, and the representations were actually based on this real data. Only the user interface was flash. They are going to have parts of it on display in the computer lab, and maybe a write-up on BDN.
Visiting with David I. was a real treat. He is a very intelligent individual, and he takes software development and application life cycle management very seriously. I had heard a lot of comments from him up on stage, and read his "Sip from the Firehose" column, but when you sit down together after a long day around midnight you can tell the conversation is very candid. He is 100% in what he says up on stage and in his commitment to software developers. Borland has a great asset in him.
A panoramic shot of the whole reception hall. To the left we have the casino tables. Then some food (it was everywhere, and pretty good even), a dance floor with a live band and video games (lots of them, everywhere!)
Immediately following the keynote was the opening reception. There was plenty of good food, Casino gambling for door prizes, and dance band (that was rather loud), dancing, and drink coupons. I took some photos and mingled a little bit. I talked to Marco Cantu, Malcom Groves, Dr. Bob, Christine Ellis, Robert Love and Dale Fuller. Not that I expect any of them to remember me.
In my brief visit with Dale he mentioned that most likely there wouldn't be a new Kylix release unless something changed. As we all know things could change tomorrow. He said there just really was very little demand for it, which is unfortunate, it is a good product. It is good to know that if and when things do change on the Linux platform, Borland will have a development tool that can be updated quite quickly.
In the immediate future, if you want to use a Borland tool to develop on Linux you actually have a few other options. I think C++Builder X could be used to target Linux, although the IDE would not run on it. Also JBuilder should run on and target Linux (since it supports a JVM). I don't use either of those tools, so I am not sure on the details. Now with Mono 1.0 release you can use Delphi 8, C# Builder and soon Diamondback to target the Linux platform, just don't use the Delphi SysUtils unit (someone needs to make a safe version of SysUtils to target Mono.)
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