Thursday, March 09, 2006

Verity Stob strikes again

Verity Stob is a legend in satirical computer writing. She has written columns for many magazines, including .EXE, Dr Dobb’s Journal and more recently The Register. Covering all aspects of computing and programming with stinging, half-serious satirical wit, she has also written some (IMO) hysterically funny old-testament style pieces of the more dramatic events in Borland and Delphi’s history.

The first piece appeared in the (now defunct) .EXE magazine in 1996(?) and was republished by The Register here. It covers the raise of Delphi/VCL as a VB-killer and descendent of Turbo Pascal and OWL, and finally Anders Hejlsberg’s move to Microsoft.

The second piece appeared only a few days ago in The Register. Predictably, it mocks the divesting of Delphi, but also covers such events as Dale Fuller’s departure, Tod Nielsen’s management speak, and Delphi 2005 quality issues. Verity also includes nuggets from the community’s non-tech discussions such as "Skype is written in Delphi" and improving the help system by following the PHP’s wiki-lead. She even throws in a Ballmer-inspired David I. for good measure.

The King-James-Bible style is hard to read, but probably fitting considering the religious-like cult of the Delphi community. The British angle and Monty Pythonesque humor is not for the faint-of-heart, but I think we should have enough self-irony to get a good laugh out of it.

I certainly did.

Update: David I. has written a calming and funny email to Ms. Stob, and got a reply!

Update II - New scrolls found
Thanks to my diligent readers, three additional Borland scrolls have been found. Here is the currently known list:

at

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous09 March, 2006 16:45

    Hallvard,

    the Chronicles of the Borland-ites aren't that scarce, verily from the mists of time two additional scrolls (at least) have been found. Missed these? ;-)

    http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=1501/ddj9806vs/jun98.htm
    http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=1502/ddj9903vs/mar99.htm

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous09 March, 2006 16:56

    I thought it was a riot, but programmers in my office are taking themselves a little too seriously to get the humor behind the article.

    Everybody just needs to calm down. All this will work out just fine.

    Cody P. Skidmore
    cody p skidmore at msn dot com

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous10 March, 2006 21:10

    Not forgetting this one: http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=8988/ddj0401o/0401o.htm

    That make the five I have a record of

    - Brian

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous14 March, 2006 20:19

    Hi Hallvard,

    Was looking at your "Other Bloggers" list and noticed that except Brad Adams blog, none of them looks active. Maybe it's time to refresh that list? :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hallvards New Blog15 March, 2006 22:00

    Hi Eyal,

    Good point! I've been meaning to do that for some time. Cleaned it up a little now, but I might add some more later.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are moderated - spam and non-relevant links to will be deleted.