Steve Teixeira
How did the illustrious "Delphi Developer's Guide" come about?
Xavier Pacheco, Charlie Calvert, and I were friends and colleagues in Borland's Turbo Pascal support department in the pre-Delphi days. Charlie, of course, had a couple programming books under his belt already, and X and I thought that was pretty cool. Charlie hooked us up with his editor at SAMS. X and I pitched the idea of a "by developers, for developers" book on Delphi programming, and we somehow managed to trick SAMS into thinking we knew what we were doing. <G> We liked to say to ourselves that our goal was to be the "Charles Petzolds of Delphi programming." You might recall that Petzold wrote what was widely considered to be THE definitive book on Windows 3.x programming. Writing the book turned out to be more work than we could have imagined in our worst nightmares, but it was truly a labor of love, so we persevered and eventually finished the first edition of the book. After the manuscript was complete, we were extremely fortunate to have Danny Thorpe on board as the technical reviewer. Not only did Danny correct our numerous errors, but he added many of the cool little tips and tricks found throughout the book. Fast forward some 8 years past 5 editions and a couple dozen foreign language versions to today, I think we did meet (or at least come close) to our goal of being the Petzolds of Delphi.
Why didn't Xavier play basketball at the 2000 Borland conference in San Diego?
Being 6'5" inches with a fairly large frame, basketball is a pretty natural fit for me. X, on the other hand has a couple of things going against him with respect to basketball: first, he's actually only 3.5 feet tall (give or take). Second, he tends to duck when a ball is thrown in his direction.
How is your last name pronounced? I've known people with that last name who pronounced it "Tex-AIR-uh", and others "Tuh-SHEAR-uh".
It's closer to "Tuh-share-uh". It's a Portuguese name, and the pronunciation I use is kind of a mix between the Portuguese and English pronunciation.
How did you get the nickname "TRex"?
David I. has a tendancy to create little abbreviations for people's names. For a while, he referred to Xavier and I as "Tex and X." Tex eventually became TRex, which probably is also a reference to my physical stature.
Where do you live, exactly? If you are not native to that area, where are you originally from?
I live with my wife and two children in Palo Alto, CA. I've lived in and around the San Francisco Bay Area my whole life.
How did you get started in programming (How were you introduced to it, when did you realize you wanted to pursue it as a profession)?
I was first introduced to programming in the 6th grade. I started programming in earnest around the 8th grade when I got my first computer, a Coleco Adam. I did a lot of coding in BASIC on my Adam and on Apple ][e computers at school. I used to write cheesey little games for my little brother and sister. I used Turbo Pascal and Turbo C in college (along with other less useful languages such as FORTRAN and LISP). I first earned money programming while I was in college, and - living in Silicon Valley - I naturally got a job at a software company when I left school.
How many years experience do you have as a programmer?
I guess you could say 17 total years, about 12 of them as a professional.
What tool did you use prior to Delphi?
Oh, a number of tools. Turbo C, Borland C++, Turbo Pascal, dBASE, and a bunch of little languages.
What languages do you know besides Delphi? Which ones do you currently utilize?
I try to keep well versed in the major languages, so aside from Delphi I regularly use C, C++, Java, C#, even VB once in a while. <G> These days I mostly use C++ and Java at work, and I tend to use Delphi and C# in my "free" time.
Would you recommend a career in programming to young people today?
Absolutely. While times can be difficult right now - especially in Silicon Valley - for developers, the long term outlook is excellent. Even in today's down market there remains demand for those with real talent.
If so, what courses would you recommend they take? What languages/technologies should they key on?
I like to boil it down to two things people should be armed with when entering the workforce: computer science theory and practical programming skills. Theory includes a mix of the basic stuff like algorithms, data structures, memory management, assembly language, and all that as well as focus areas of personal interest like compilers, databases, networking, etc. "Practical programming skills" means proficiency with modern languages and tools like C++, Java, C#, Visual Studio, Borland IDEs, etc. Not to sound like a grumpy old fossil coder, but one of the things that bugs me about some curriculums these days is that they let people graduate into the professional world without learning about memory management. For example, they'll focus on Java as a primary teaching language, which is fine in general, but it can be difficult to learn memory management in Java because most of those details are hidden from the developer. C/C++ or even Delphi is better to learn the concepts of stack, heap, globals, pointers, etc. Even those that desire only to code in Java will write better Java code when they can understand how their VM implements memory management.
Which software project/product that you have participated in are you most proud of?
Probably Delphi 3. Despite Anders Hejlsberg leaving Borland for MS 1/2-way through the cycle, the team pulled off a great release that -- at the time -- included much richer COM/ActiveX support than anything MS produced for the next year.
What project[s] are you currently working on?
I'm right now in the process of finishing up several projects and starting several new ones. I recently left my position as Director of Product Architecture at Zone Labs to start a new software development services company called Falafel Software. I enjoyed my time with Zone Labs, as it's a great challenge to tackle the various problems there are to solve in consumer and enterprise endpoint security and to do so at "hacker speed." And of course, there is no shortage of interesting problems to solve, both internally and for our clients, at Falafel Software. I'm also currently considering writing a book on secure software development.
What is the name of your business and/or employer?
Falafel Software, headquartered in Silicon Valley, CA. It's a new venture that Lino Tadros and I have started together to provide high-end consulting and training services to the software development community worldwide.
I did the corporate engineering management thing for several years now, so I am looking forward to getting back to my roots to some extent by being very deeply involved with development tools, doing more public speaking and writing, and helping a lot of different organizations solve interesting software problems.
What is your web site URL?
www.falafelsoft.com I don't maintain a personal web site right now.
What was the funniest experience you've ever had related to programming?
Lino Tadros is a notorious practical joker. When we are on the verge of shipping one version of Delphi he started running around telling everyone in R&D and QA that he had found a horrible crash bug. He would bring each victim to his desk and show them the "crash," which popped up what looked like an access violation dialog with an address of 0x8004235Z. "Z," of course, is not a valid hex character, so part of the fun was seeing who would spot it. Chuck and Danny, of course saw through the joke right away, cursed Lino, and walked back to their offices. A few other team members weren't so quick to catch on that the address was bogus. It relieved a lot of pre-ship stress.
What was the most interesting experience you've ever had related to programming?
Learning from Chuck J. was always interesting. He has a cool little programming trick up his sleeve for almost any occasion.
What was the most frustrating experience you've ever had related to programming?
As a developer, the most frustrating time for me was always pre-ship, when you have this huge deadline looming, people waiting on you, and a stack of bugs of an unknown nature to fix. As a manager, the most frustrating part is the project planning, where there are so many good ideas and so many projects but only a limited number of people to do the work.
What 3rd party tools do you find essential?
I don't use a lot of third party components these days, but do I find the SoftIce debugger and vmware essential tools.
What do you hope to see from Borland, especially as regards Delphi, in the future?
Well, .NET support is the obvious thing -- both in Delphi and in other Borland products. I think their approach to ALM as a whole rather than just programming tools is the right one from a strategic standpoint, as long as they continue to innovate on the tools side.
Where would you be without Delphi?
Where would Delphi be without you?
While I'm pleased and proud to have swam in several different pools in the Delphi community, it's safe to say that I benefited from Delphi more that it from me. I liked to think that I made the parts I touched a little better, but it's not like Delphi wouldn't have existed or there would be no 3rd party book market without me. However, my time working on Borland and my books have been very valuable for my career, so definitely owe the product more than it owes me.
What effect do you foresee C# and VisualStudio.NET having on Borland in general and Delphi in particular?
I still maintain a pretty close relationship with Borland, so I may know too much to answer this truthfully. <G> Let me just say that these things present more challenges for Borland going forward, which I think they'll meet.
How many hours per day do you spend programming/at the computer?
25 (it seems)
How much time do you spend on the newsgroups/surfing the web each day?
I really don't read the newsgroups like I used to these days -- only so many hours in a day. I spend several hours a day on the web for news, mail, research, etc.
Which programming websites do you have bookmarked?
Too many to list! But usually between google and msdn, I find most of the info I'm looking for.
How do you keep current with your programming skills?
Sleep deprivation, mainly. Because I don't always get a lot of time to code during the day, I sneak in some coding on nights and weekends and when I travel. Writing books and articles and papers has kept me sharp on certain technologies. I also built a website for my wife's business in Delphi 6 and 7:
www.sewmanyfriends.com, which kept me busy for a while.
Which Borland Conferences have you attended?
I've spoken at every conference since 1995 and served on the Advisory Board for every conference since 1996, with the exception of 1997, when I was home with a newborn son.
Which was the best one, and why?
Technically, they have all been excellent. My first one in San Diego in 1995 occupies a soft spot in my heart. The last conference of the Del Yocam era was probably the worst. That was during the Inprise "we're not a developer tools company anymore" phase that has thankfully long since passed.
Who do you consider to be the best programmer you know personally, or know of?
Now that I think of it, there are so many to choose from. I've worked with some great people at pretty much every stop in my career. Anders Hejlsberg would probably be the best, since he is not only a great implementer but also a brilliant visionary and communicator.
What is your "claim to fame" outside the realm of programming?
Gee, I don't think I have a claim to fame outside of the software business. How sad, eh?
If you weren't a programmer, what do you think you'd be?
A military historian, perhaps.
If you were given 30 seconds of free television air time, to be broadcast all throughout the earth, and could say anything you wanted, what would it be?
Since it's unlikely I would be able to do any real good for humanity in 30 seconds, I'm sure I could devise some self-serving purpose such as selling a Ronco-like kitchen gadget or a "Steve Teixeira Grill" or something like that. LOL
Favorite programming book:
Practical Algorithms for Programmers (Binstock & Rex)... great algorithms book for professionals without all the academic fluff. :)
Favorite non-programming book:
1984 (George Orwell)
Favorite movie:
Patton
Favorite musician or musical group:
Probably The Beatles, although I enjoy many different varieties of music.
This interview took place via email April 2003
Clay Shannon is a Borland and PDA-certified Delphi 5 developer and the author of "Tomes of Delphi: Developer's Guide to Troubleshooting" (Wordware, 2001) as well as the novel he claims is the strangest one ever written, "the Wacky Misadventures of Warble McGorkle" (see http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?12500000036639
for more information on the 4 Novels application, which contains this and three other novels he has penned).
You can find out more about Clay at: 
