Want more...SledgeHammers

Fifty years ago, today, the Berlin Wall was built, separating the city into two parts.  I've been to the beautiful city of Berlin several times.  I was in Munich when the wall was torn down, visited Berlin when the new German government center was just a hole in the ground (with pumps draining the water our of the "big dig" site), and again last year for the Delphi Tage (Delphi Day).  In 1989, I remember watching TV and seeing people using sledgehammers, chisels, metal poles, cars, trucks, and their hands to tear down the wall.  There were wonderful pictures of German citizens and visitors dancing on the wall and in the streets.

As developers we encounter many walls standing in the way of successful completion of a project.  With hard work, ingenuity, tools, and teamwork, programmers have broken through tough problems and torn down their development walls.  Breaking large projects up into smaller projects makes the walls smaller adn easier to overcome.

Some marathon runners also hit walls during their twenty-six-plus mile journey. I was recently reading an article about how a new runner could approach the challenges of a marathon.  One piece of advice was to think of the marathon as twenty-six one mile races.  With agile methods we can also break down tough projects into manageable chunks (the Scrum agile method calls them sprints).

With the great tools developers have - smart programmable IDEs, high speed compilers, component base visual development, rich data connections to enterprise databases, support for high speed graphics, and abstraction layers for the operation system - we have the sledgehammer we need to get the software job done.

On this anniversary of the creation of the Berlin Wall, I am reminded that there is no challenge that is too hard.  There is no wall that is too strong or too high.  In a world where software can

• facilitate building bridges between systems


• break down barriers to automation


• bring more people closer together


• enhance the lives of physically and mentally handicapped individuals


• create new jobs and industries


• and so much more

there are no walls that we can't tear down.

Pink Floyd, in their awesome album "The Wall", sing songs about isolation and the creation of walls (mental and otherwise).  The wall is eventually torn down.  With the passing of time and using remnants of the wall a better world is created.  Use software to bring more people together.  Use software to make the world a better place.

At Embarcadero Technologies, we dedicated to bringing developers next generation tools to accelerate your business application successes.  We are touring the world showing programmers how to use FireMonkey, the GPU-powered next-generation application platform, to create visually stunning HD and 3D business applications that are more immersive and interactive than anything on the market. FireMonkey is a huge sledgehammer for developers who want to build applications for Windows, Mac, Web and Mobile.

Delphi Tage 2011 will take place in Cologne Germany on September 9 and 10. I'll be in Cologne to show everyone the new RAD Studio XE2.  I look forward to seeing the great developers and speakers who attend each year.