Year 2000 Highlights
December 28, 2000: The Essential Pascal section of the site has been updated and rearranged. The book content had only minor editing, but you can now download a complete version of the book in a single zip file, and for each of a few different langauges.
December 27: The ebook, or technical paper, Advanced VCL Components I wrote for the Borland Conference 2000 is available online on www.ebooks.uk.net. If you missed the conference, you can buy it for a mere 0.80 UKP (about 1.20 USD), following the link above.
November 28: Marco will speak at an SDGN meetgin in Holland, the coming December 8th. More information, in Dutch, on the SDGN site. Presentations will cover advanced Internet Express topics and a summary of the Fun Side of Delphi.
November 6: I've just found an article with a very interesting perspective on Microsoft's .NET: Microsoft Goes Bonkers. Is it worse than vaporware? I don't fully agree, but the perspective is interesting...
November 3: The Arabic translation of Essential Pascal, the free introduction to the Pascal language in Delphi written by Marco Cantù, is now available. Follows translations in Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, French, Japanese, Portoguese, Turkish.
November 3: Borland redesigns its web site. Notice how the company indicates it has now three divisions: Java, Enterprise, RAD Tools (indlcuing Delphi and Kylix).
October 5: My newsgroups (on news.marcocantu.it) have now been re-activated, after a 24-hours stop. Sorry for the trouble.
September 20: there is some turmoil going on with InterBase, hope eveyghing gets back under control. You can check the official Interbase site, which has the 6.0.1 patch for download and an Open Letter to the InterBase Community. Two alternative sites are IBPhoneix, which is owned by some of the original developer and product managers of InterBase at Borland, and the the site of the The InterBase Developers's Initiative. There is also an InterBase WebRing.
August 10: The transcript of the Delphi chat I did with Bob Swart (the "Spirit of Delphi" chat) at the Borland confererence is available on Borland Community site.
August 1: Interbase 6 is now open source, but Inprise has reverted the earlier decision to form a separate company to push it. Will support be really available from Inprise? Will the source code fork in two separate products? Hard to say, but keep an eye on The InterBase Developers's Initiative.
July 18: I'm back form the Borland Conference and my OOP class in San Diego (Effective OOP in Delphi). See my conference page, with slides and code downloads, and the udpated Fun Side of Delphi page. If you've missed the class but are interested in the topics, I might run it again in Europe in the next few months. Let me know.
June 26: Two new chapter, and many fixes to the Essential Delphi book have been uploaded. The book now includes three chapters: Introduction, IDE, and Object Repository.
June 6: The Kylix Kicks section of Bob Swart (aka Dr. Bob) web site hosts Kylix news and also the first few screenshots of the IDE!
June 5: My article A dataset with no database has been published on the borland community web site. The sample source code is available in the DevNews section of my code repository.
June 3, 2000: I've realized that the newsgroup subscription and site subscription programs have been out of work for the entire month of May. If you did subscribe, your name might have gone lost. Please subscribe again, if you are interetes in receiving an email informing you of site updated and new projects and books from Marco.
May 20: Borland and Corel have jointly decided not to proceed with their merger. So we have Inprise again... not doing too bad, after all.
Apr 28: Not a bad quarter for Borland/Inprise, and rumors about revising the Corel merger become consistent. See a nice article on cnet.
Feb 21, 2000: Mastering Delphi 5 wins Delphi Informant's Readers' Choice Awards, in the book category. This is the second time in 5 years. Congratulations also to Paheco and Teixeira for their very tight second place. Thanks for your votes.
Feb 17, 2000: The Delphi 5 patch is available on the Delphi download area of Borland site.
Feb 7, 2000: The page with Mastering Delphi 5 Corrections has been updated once more.
Jan 4, 2000: Delphi Developer's Handbook source code is available for download (some of the Delphi 3 programs won't compile under Delphi 5). Buy the book if you want to understand it <g>.
Year 1999 Highlights
Sep 23, 1999: At 1.35 am, Lella (Marco's wife) gave birth to the first child of Marco, a nice girl, Benedetta. Mother and child (and father) are doing great.