Delphi and C++Builder 2009 European Tour

Delphi 2009 and C++Builder 2009 is a very solid release. So is the newest "Death Magnetic" album from Metallica. I'm sitting right now on the plane to Lisbon and feel a little bit like a musician on the tour. Different cities every week. There should be a Delphi 2009 European Tour T-shirt with tour agenda on the back. I'm just one of the many people involved in presenting C++Builder 2009 and Delphi 2009 across the world.
David I and Greg Keller, Embarcadero Chief Evangelists, are probably the most busy ones. Delphi 2009, C++Builder 2009 and ER/Studio (bundled with Delphi "Architect") are very warmly received in every single place I've been to. It is so much fun to start the IDE (look how fast it is!) and see all these hardcore developers happy faces, as they see that Delphi and C++Builder are moving forward and provide lots of new features like brand new DataSnap 2009 framework, full Unicode support, enhancements to Project Manager, new Class Explorer, new and enhanced VCL components, native Win32 Ribbon controls for building Office 2007 look-and-feel user interfaces, and powerful new programming language features including Delphi generics, anonymous methods and C++0x extensions.





I'm not trying to provide a complete list of Delphi and C++Builder launch events across Europe here. These are just random notes and photos. I have not been to Italy this year where Marco Cantu delivered excellent Delphi seminar. Jon Harrison last week demonstrated Delphi in Budapest. In Russia they have Alexey Kovyazin hosting most, if not all, Russian Delphi events. Same for all German and French speaking countries. English language there? Not neccessarly:-) Matthias Eissing from Germany and Thierry Laborde from France know exactly how to present Delphi and C++Builder 2009:-)

Probably one of the first European Delphi and C++Builder 2009 demonstrations was done by Magnus Flysjö, Swedish Delphi community leader, on the Delphi User Group meeeting in Denmark. Make sure to check out excellent Delphi 2009 wallpaper created by Magnus. David I, while in Latin America, did a virtual keynote for Danish DAPUG programmers.

In London we had Embarcadero VP, Nigel Brown, doing a keynote and Karun Malhotra, from Embarcadero UK office, demonstrating to Delphi and C++Builder developers DatabaseGear Change Manager. Being able to perform a diff on a database scheme and data was really intriguing.





Delphi event in Poland attracted more then 150 Polish programmers. That was cool. Delphi 2009 launch on the same day as "Death Magnetic" Metallica album. Rafał Kędzierski, BSC Polska Marketing Manager, would probably tell you that there is nothing like Iron Maiden. Andrzej Dąbrowski, consultant from BSC Polska, demonstrated very interesting overview of DatabaseGear products and ER/Studio Developer Edition functionality.

















Below a picture from Delphi and C++Builder launch was organized by Moonsoft, our reseller in Finland.





Launch events in Amstelveen and Brussels were organized by Barnsten, CodeGear knowledge centre in Benelux. It was very inspiring for me to see Raymond Horsten from CSB, DatabaseGear Benelux knowledge centre, demonstrating ER/Studio. I was making notes as tomorrow in Lisbon it is my first time to demo ER/Studio...









I'm always happy to go to Denmark. They invented Lego (MindStorms), Metallica (Lars Ulrich), and Delphi (Anders Hejlsberg) over there;-)
With Ole Vestergaard, from Nohau, I've been to Allerod and Aarhus demonstrating Delphi 2009 and seeing some familiar faces from previous Delphi events.





The Delphi and C++Builder European Tour continues! Tomorrow is Lisbon, and Friday it is Madrid. Next week we have Delphi Product Manager, Nick Hodges, presenting Delphi keynote on the annual SDC Conference in the Netherlands. This is going to be a real Delphi fest with sessions from Bob Swart, Marco Cantu, Jeroen Pluimers, Hadi Harriri and others in Delphi track. The day after SDC there is Delphi event in Stockholm with Nick and Magnus, and in the following week events in Prague and Bratislava.

Delphi and C++Builder users are extremaly passionate and loyal to their beloved tools. At the beginning of a seminar I would typically ask the audience what version of Delphi or C++Builder they are using. I have recently start to ask who was using Turbo Pascal from pre-Delphi era, and it is common to have more then a half of audience coming from Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++ background! There is this slide with product roadmaps and "Turbo Pascal" and "Turbo C++" are there in the first quarter of 2009. I'm looking forward to meeting students at universities some time next year.

Did you know that Niklaus Wirth designed Pascal programming language as a tool for teaching students good programming practices?