Seeing C++

Journal Entry — November 7, 1991

At one point I see a call for papers for the Borland Language Conference. I write up a proposal of how to visualize this new information based on stuff I'd like to do in the manual but there's no time.

This week Greg (my boss) has a meeting and gives us new assignments. When he gets to me he says, "I liked your proposal for the conference and I think that's something we need. Make that your job. And redesign the way we present our software environment for all the books." I found my face flooded with pleasure and surprise. He took my idea and saw larger implications for it.

Because this is definitely a highly creative task. I'm thrilled because I'm in a position to really do something creative that could directly impact people's lives and even be history. It's something that doesn't exist, that people need and want...

What I propose is to diagram the system in an object-oriented way, instead of a hierarchical way. And then use that method to diagram templates. Templates is a way of representing data for the computer that is the cutting edge of C++. It was created by AT&T Bell labs as an idea, but Borland is the first company to put it in their product. As far as we know, it's the only or best solution to managing large amounts of data, which is coming up for everyone.