Paving the Way for Computer Education

[Brovin Yaroslav]

 

There has been a lot going on at Embarcadero! Just today you will note some changes in our Website and there is so much more to come. With everything underway way have been a little quiet in the last month or so. I had a special Delphi moment a few weeks ago, and have to share the story. Yes, I love the PR (BusinessWire: Embarcadero Delphi is Named Developer Language of Choice for South African High School Students), but this is more personal and I believe important for our brand going forward.

On February 17^th Embarcadero awarded a special education recognition to several districts in South Africa and high school students for their achievements in leveraging Delphi for Computer Education. It is a very proud moment when a company is able to support education at such scale. Of course there are other technology companies that do a lot for schools and it is fantastic to be in good company. However there are a few aspects that make this more remarkable.

We are not a huge company and we are successful for two reasons, independent of our size.

#1 - We have a great product. Delphi represents the most evolved version of Object Pascal housed inside an open and powerful IDE. Delphi is a modern programming language that is uniquely positioned for education. With more than 20 years of continuous innovation. Delphi is the de-facto industry standard version of Object Pascal. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard developers tell me that once you program in Delphi, the elegance and simplicity of expression is something that you never forget. Delphi combines the ease of learning programming with the advanced capabilities for building enterprise, cloud and multi-device applications on Windows 10, OS X, iOS and Android. For full transparency, I also learned programming in Pascal. Yes, as the Internet conquered the world, Delphi lost some ground. The immediate gratification from programming something that is visible on the WEB is very powerful and attractive for first time developers. However, I think that with web development we’ve lost an appreciation of the algorithmic qualities of programming and these are especially important for education. When I listened to Carina Labuscagne, Chief Education Specialist from South Africa’s Education Department, speak about the benefits from computer programming for learning other subjects, I told myself “this makes a lot of sense!” Of course, the challenge to strengthen mathematics and sciences in the US is nothing new, and we are probably too small to solve for that, but at the same time “how cool is to have something so special to build on!”

 

#2 – We have an incredible developer community. My host in South Africa was Bertie Buitendag. Bertie has been our MVP there for many years and teaches in a great technical university. He is a champion for Delphi and has been instrumental for the adoption of the language for education in South Africa. Bertie volunteers for one reason “Delphi is the best language to learn programming. I love when my students enjoy what they learn and stick to it.” We spoke in depth about advantages and disadvantages of different programming languages. Delphi displaced Java as the language for early education in the South African high schools. He was very explicit that Java is a very important language, but Delphi is just much easier to start with and easier to adopt as a school platform. Bertie does this because he is passionate and because he feels a sincere responsibility as an educator. We have so many MVPs and partners across the world, that are at least as passionate – “what power!”

Today, I am even more confident that we will have a lot to celebrate in the coming months and years. We will evolve the product, continue to champion Delphi, regain our position as the leader in C++, broaden our offerings for developers, and much more. I truly hope that we will have many more such special moments that help propel our company, customers, and community to exponential success! “Doing Good is Good Business” said Ken Msuku from Computek, our partner in South Africa. It is a bit of cliche, but so true.

If you have any questions regarding our education programs, feel free to email David.Intersimone@embarcadero.com.

Talk to you soon!

Atanas Popov

Embarcadero General Manager

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