Everything started by writing a game program in basic...

At first computer programming was a hobby for me. I programmed for classes at school. Then it became part of my job. I started with Borland Pascal, switched to Borland C++,  played with Watcom alittle bit, then Visual C++ and then C++ Builder and Delphi as the new projects and new versions came out.

I started getting serious using Borland Pascal 7.0 and Borland C++ 3.1 in 1995-96. In those days it was the first compiler that had a Windows IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Perhaps the most user friendly compiler of the  time. OWL (Object Windows Library) was the first application framework that really eased windows programming. Then it was ported to C++, and soon it was followed by  MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes). Now there’s VCL (Visual Component Library of C++ Builder and Delphi) and MFC is a success story. I still think OWL  is a really nice piece of code but it was missing the name “Microsoft” preceding it.

I have used VCL with C++ Builder and Delphi. I have completed few ATL projects with Visual C++. I took some Java classes and tried some Java programming at work  mainly using JBuilder. I used Java to write applets for Internet. Little did I know i would use Java for the next 10 years to make a living. I got serious with Java to write the GUI for the next generation Object-Relational DBMS, the Cloudscape’s GUI: Cloudview. Then in IBM it was bunch of Java projects one after the other.

Nowadays I learn .NET to write small desktop and command line applications for the Windows platform. Yep, Java still sucks on the desktop. No, we can’t ship SWT for a 500KB application.

For the web development I used ASP (Active Server Pages) scripts. I did some work with Visual Interdev but I really like Net Objects Fusion to develop web pages. It  makes the difference between going home on time and an all nighter. Then came JSP and I played with it too. After that PHP captured my heart and I have not looked back even though I want to try Ruby and Rails and Phython. But the admin friendly nature of PHP makes it the number one choice for shared web hosting and it looks like it is hard for Ruby or Phython to dethrone it. No, .NET can’t do it either.

Nowadays, I am using Java to write the GUI for the next generation Object-Relational DBMS, the Cloudscape’s GUI: Cloudview.

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demir9@gmail.com