President Woll2Woll Software

“Hi. I like to introduce myself. I’m Roy Woll, and I am president and founder of Woll2Woll Software. I have been around Delphi for all 25 years and even before.
To give some background,, I like to start with some personal history before Delphi was launched to give you some context of my life around that time.

In 1993 I was working at a corporation who used VAX/VMS systems to develop software to control telephone testing equipment. The job was ok, but not too exciting. At that time, I was much more passionate about Borland’s lighting fast Turbo Pascal compiler and Paradox for Windows. I loved the revolution happening in the personal computer world. I even applied for a job at Borland at one point since I wanted to be part of this paradigm shift in development. Unfortunately after my phone interview with them, I did not hear back. I thought I aced all their C++ questions, but maybe I got one wrong, or maybe they were looking for someone who was already using their tools in their day job. For me it was just an outside the work hobby, but I loved using the tools.

So since Borland didn’t hire me, it was time to launch my own company Woll2Woll Software. We created add-ons for Paradox for Window which included our documentation tool named ezDoc, and our library ezDialogs. They both were very well received, and our company became known in the Paradox world. Both of these products used Borland C++ to create Dlls that were integrated with ObjectPAL, the Paradox for Windows language. ObjectPAL was not quite up to creating these kinds of tools on its own, since it was mostly just a database language without much GUI language support.

About 18 months later, I was invited to a Delphi pre-launch in Scott’s Valley. It was an exciting time with an in-depth presentation by the team. It was to be a full blown framework for windows development and database access. It was a dream come true for me, as now I did not have to use two different tools (Paradox and C++) to do the job. Delphi could do everything and do it so naturally with its new VCL library. I was literally blown away. It compiled almost instantaneously and the programs ran incredibly fast. I immediately starting working with the beta, and trying to replicate the capabilities of Paradox for Windows. It became apparent to me that it needed more, such as a more advanced grid, better database support such as true database filtering, lookup fields, validation masks. So I began working night and day on our new product InfoPower. Delphi came out and we launched about a month or two afterward. I thought my Paradox tools did well, but I had no idea the energy that was to be the Delphi community and InfoPower really took off. It really filled the void of the Paradox for Windows programmer who didn’t want to sacrifice functionality or ease of development.

Since then of course Delphi kept getting better and better. It changed hands a few times to different companies but each new version brought excitement. More recently Delphi has introduced another fantastic new library named FireMonkey. Just as the VCL made windows development natural and easy, FireMonkey does the same for other platforms and devices. With the same excitement we created our new library FirePower about 5 years ago, to work with this new framework. Just as I was thrilled to develop for Windows 25 years ago with a better framework, I can now again for all the latest computers and mobile devices with the FireMonkey library.

I want to congratulate the Delphi team, the pioneers who started it and the community and leaders who keep it going strong. It certainly changed my life direction, and still impacts me everyday. If there is one word that exemplifies delphi for me as a programmer it is the word JOY. Thank you Delphi!”