Raize Software, Inc.

“My Delphi story goes way back to the days of Turbo Pascal. I fell in love with the language and tool back in college. My first programming job was at Argonne National Lab as an undergrad where I rewrote a data acquisition system in Turbo Pascal for the Physics Dept. Unfortunately, after graduating, I worked for several different companies, but none of them allowed me to code in Turbo Pascal.

However, I continued programming in Turbo Pascal on my own and I started writing articles for PC Techniques magazine. This lead to Jeff Duntemann offering me the opportunity to write a regular column for the magazine called Blazing Pascal. I am grateful to this day for Jeff giving me this opportunity, because shortly after I started the column, Jeff connected me to Borland about some cool new tool they were building.

I was also very fortunate to be allowed to publish the first Delphi article, “Introducing Delphi 95” in September 1994. I continued to write about Delphi in every PC Techniques issue that followed (including the rebranding to Visual Developer Magazine).

I was amazed at the feedback I received from those early articles. So much so that I decided to go into Delphi consulting. On Feb 7, 1995, a week before the official launch of Delphi, I started Raize Software Solutions. I found a client almost immediately, quit my job, and started training a group of Smalltalk developers at First Chicago Bank how to use Delphi.

Shortly after I started, I was presented with a serious programming challenge. The developers at the bank understood object-oriented programming well, and they wanted to isolate their business rules from the user interface, but they also did not want to abandon Delphi’s data-aware controls, which is what another consultant was proposing. This was unacceptable to the VP in charge of the department and the other consultant’s contract was quickly terminated.

I got the call on a Friday that I needed to come up with a solution. I was excited that I was going be able to bill more hours, but I was freaking out. I had just started my consulting company. I hadn’t even been able to submit an invoice for the training I had performed. Now I had to come up with a solution to a very complex problem very quickly, or my consulting career may quickly come to an end.

That weekend I created what I called Data-Aware Business Components. It was a huge hit with the bank. After that, I never looked back. That summer, my first book, Developing Custom Delphi Components was published, and I was selected to present some Delphi sessions at the 1995 Borland Conference.

The success of the book lead to the creation of Raize Components and CodeSite. I continue to use Delphi almost every day, and I still write Delphi articles/posts and present Delphi sessions at conferences. I consider myself very lucky, indeed.”

https://delphibydesign.com/