Coworkers gave me this one. Any spot, cubicle, or desk you give me, will not confine me for long. I will soon grow my workspace beyond this area. You can toss stuff back in, but it will soon spread again.....

I guess the name does deserve a little explaining. Especially for those of you who have never lived in the American South. Kudzu is an unstoppable vine that grows there. It eats houses, cars, malls, and even people if you do not run fast enough. Kudzu in the summer can grow over a foot a day. And herbicides do not help. As a matter of fact, most of them make it grow faster!

Kudzu is also known as Japanese Honeysuckle. It was brought to the United States in the 1876 for a Japanese Exposition, and "escaped". In Japan it grows like any other plant, however the American South was a perfect climate for it, and like a match being introduced to gasoline, you can now see the results:

http://www.hower.org/kudzu/Kudzu/index.html

Where do you live, exactly? If you are not native to that area, where are you originally from?

I spend my summers in St Petersburg, Russia and my winters in Limassol, Cyprus. I also travel quite a bit throughout the year with about 8 trips to other parts of Europe, about 4 trips per year to the US and Canada, frequent trips to Siberia and other parts of Russia, and occasionally a trip to South America or Australia.

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)?

When I was 6 in school they put a Timex Sinclair with a memory expansion pack that expanded it to 4 kilobytes in front of me to play with. I was hooked and from that point knew what I wanted to do. All through school, including high school they kept telling me to "keep my options open, you might change your mind". But I knew I would not, and knew exactly what I wanted to do.

How many years experience do you have as a programmer? What was your career path to where you are now?

Well I started when I was 6, and pretty much have been working since then. So that makes it about 23 years. My career path started as in independent, then as a consultant to big firms, then partners in small companies, and now back to starting my own.

What tool did you use prior to Delphi?

Immediately before Visual Basic 3 because it was the only tool for creating Windows UI's in a RAD manner. But prior to that C++, GFA, Pascal, Fortran, Assembly, and so on...

What languages do you know besides Delphi? Which ones do you currently utilize?

I've dabbled in just about every common and semi-common language, but really Delphi is my preference. C# is the nicest contender I've seen in a long time, but I still strongly prefer Delphi over C#.

Would you recommend a career in programming to young people today?

If they enjoy programming, yes. It's not for everybody.

If so, what courses would you recommend they take? What languages/technologies should they key on?

With regards to math, algebra. Forget the higher maths so many Universities and schools focus on. The typical programmer unless they are working for CERN or NASA really never progresses beyond algebra.

With regards to programming its good to have a wide spread view, so Pascal, C++ (Just so they can learn how not to program), C#, Java, and ADA. ADA to teach its view of QA, contracts, etc.

Which software project/product that you have participated in are you most proud of?

Indy and IntraWeb.

What project[s] are you currently working on?

IntraWeb, Indy and several skunkworks type projects we have not announced yet. But unfortunately lately I do a lot of writing, management, marketing etc and not as much programming as I would like.

What is the name of your business and/or employer?

Atozed Software - http://www.atozedsoftware.com

What is your web site URL?

is my personal "technical" and oddities site.

What was the most frustrating experience you've ever had related to programming?

Using Windows on a daily basis.

What 3rd party tools do you find essential?

Full list at http://www.hower.org/Kudzu/Software/index.html, but the most essential are Delphi, IntraWeb, Indy, PGP, FinalBuilder, and VMWare.

What do you hope to see from Borland, especially as regards Delphi, in the future?

Continued support and cross platform support.

Where would you be without Delphi?

I would be a lot more frustrated and probably back building my own language. As many programmers have, I tinkered around with compilers early on.

Where would Delphi be without you?

Without Indy and IntraWeb. :)

What effect do you foresee C# and VisualStudio.NET having on Borland in general and Delphi in particular?

As long as Borland gets Delphi.net out in reasonable time, I think they will have a positive impact on Delphi. It will make it easier for users to move to Delphi.

What do you think of the .NET framework?

It should have happened years ago. I think its great for Windows, but I still don't trust the cross platform promises behind it, or the hidden motives of Microsoft. We'll just have to see how Microsoft plays things out, but for Windows at least its great.

How many hours per day do you spend programming/at the computer?

More than my wife would like.

How much time do you spend on the newsgroups/surfing the web each day?

Because of tech support, sometimes a few hours.

Which programming web sites do you have bookmarked?

None. I rely on mail and NNTP feeds for news.

How do you keep current with your programming skills?

Practice, practice, practice.

Which Borland Conferences have you attended?

Way too many to list. I speak at about 5-6 Borland conferences a year throughout the US, Europe and sometimes other parts of the world.

Which was the best one, and why?

Its hard to pick a best one, each has its strengths. BorCon US is always the biggest, but I really enjoy CTTM in the Netherlands, Entwickler in Germany, and the Poland conferences as well. I look forward to each of those each year.

Who do you consider to be the best programmer you know personally, or know of?

I don't know of anyone I would classify as "best programmer". I know of many programmers I would classify as best within a certain specialty of
programming.

What is your "claim to fame" outside the realm of programming?

There is a realm outside of programming?

If you weren't a programmer, what do you think you'd be?

A photographer or a chef.

If you could live anywhere on earth at any time, when and where would it be, and why?

Well I can live anywhere on earth now, as long as it has Internet. That's really the big problem now, some of the places I'd like to live don't have good Internet or airport access. :)

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?

I am not so naive to think that war will end any time soon, or racism, or nationalism will end any time soon. However I believe they are one of the biggest problems facing the world today. But what I do believe is that many of the solutions "proposed" today are pure poppycock and do little to assist. War, nationalism, and racism come down to human nature. This is not easily changed, but unfortunately is it easily fueled.

A quote from J. Krishnamurti:

"To bring about peace in the world, to stop all wars, there must be a revolution in the individual, in you and me. Economic revolution without this inward revolution is meaningless, for hunger is the result of the maladjustment of economic conditions produced by our psychological states - greed, envy, ill will and possessiveness. To put an end to sorrow, to hunger, to war, there must be a psychological revolution and few of us are willing to face that. We will discuss peace, plan legislation, create new leagues, the United Nations and so on and on; but we will not win peace because we will not give up our position, our authority, our money, our properties, our stupid lives. To rely on others is utterly futile; others cannot bring us peace. No leader is going to give us peace, no government, no army, no country. What will bring peace is inward transformation, which will lead to outward action. Inward transformation is not isolation, is not
a withdrawal from outward action. On the contrary, there can be right action only when there is right thinking and there is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge. Without knowing yourself, there is no peace.

To put an end to outward war, you must begin to put an end to war in yourself. Some of you will nod your heads and say, "I agree", and go outside and do exactly the same as you have been doing for the last ten or twenty years. Your agreement is merely verbal and has no significance, for the world's miseries and wars are not going to be stopped by your casual assent.

They will be stopped only when you realize the danger, when you realize your responsibility, when you do not leave it to somebody else. If you realize the suffering, if you see the urgency of immediate action and do not postpone, then you will transform yourself; peace will come only when you yourself are peaceful, when you yourself are at peace with your neighbor."

I don't think we can ever "transform" everyone, but the more people we can get to realize this, the better. Especially the leaders of the world who think they are the solutions and that they have some "divine" or "special" intelligence greater than the rest of us.

What is you favorite programming book?

I rarely read computer books, I find everything I want on the Internet.

What is you favorite non-programming book?

The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz (not the book of the same title by Stephen King). I think that this should be a mandatory book in schools.

What is you favorite food?

Mexican.

What is you favorite beverage?

Root Beer.

What is you favorite color?

Green.

What is you favorite movie?

Better Off Dead with John Cussack.

Finally, the question I always like to ask: What would you rather eat: the fat from behind a caribou's eyeball, or a frosted poptart?

I like to try all kinds of strange foods, and in my travels I've tried some really weirdo stuff. Some good, some not. ;) So I'll have to choose the fat behind a caribou's eyeball, even if only once. Who knows, it might be good.