C7 and Clarion.NET? Old news, my friend.

by Dave Harms

Published 2007-04-01    Printer-friendly version

Last week I received an anonymously mailed package including a round trip, first class ticket to Fort Lauderdale, Florida and a voucher for the cab ride to SoftVelocity’s office in Pompano Beach. There was no letter of explanation, only a handwritten note: “Be at the back lane entrance at 6:00 p.m.”

The ticket looked legit. United confirmed the reservation, but couldn’t tell me who had purchased it. I tried calling SV to confirm the arrangement, but got lost in the voicemail system.

So the next day I got on the plane, and to make a long story short, found myself in the lane behind the SoftVelocity office at the appointed time.

A man opened the door, and motioned me inside. I’d like to tell you who he is, but I honestly don’t know his identity. He told me I could call him “Deep Code”. He motioned me to follow him down a hallway.

“Why have you brought me here,” I asked. “Is it to show me the C7 AppGen?” I took a deep breath. “Or perhaps… perhaps even Clarion.NET?”

Deep Code chuckled. “C7? That’s old news. We’re now at C8 and Clarion.NET 2.0. And that’s not even why I brought you here. No, I want you blow the lid off something really new.”

I was more than a little perplexed. “C8? What happened to C7? Are you going to skip it completely, like Clarion for Windows 3.0?”

“Skip it? Nah. We released it 18 months ago.”

I looked around for the hidden camera. “You’re kidding, right? I mean, here we are, in alpha release, and you’re telling me it’s a done deal?”

Deep Code raised a finger to his lips, and opened a door. We entered, and I found myself in a large cubicle warren. The room appeared deserted. Deep Code sat down at a nearby desk and began tapping at a keyboard.

“Look, I don’t understand,” I said, sitting down across from Deep Code. “How could you have product ready to go and not tell anyone about it?”

“Contractual obligations,” replied Deep Code. “We think of it as the Frank Watts Legacy. The man knew how to write a contract, I’ll give him that. When we took over the Clarion product line we read the fine print, and we realized that we wouldn’t be able to say anything meaningful about new product for seven years.”

“So you actually finished C7 back in 2005…”

“And we tried to find someway of wording an announcement so that it wouldn’t contravene the contract. Z went to a lot of work writing newsgroup posts in which every third word made up a message explaining where to buy C7 and Clarion.NET. We were sure that would work; a lot of guys in the newsgroups only seem to read every third word we write anyway. But nobody figured it out.”

My head was spinning. “So C7 is really out?”

“Actually we’re at C7.3 already.”

“What about the alpha program?”

“We kept all the alpha builds, so we’re just feeding them to the testers every few weeks. Mostly that’s a make work project for Bob Foreman.

“And Clarion.NET?”

“We released 1.0 a few months after DevCon 2004. Actually we got lucky there. A FoxPro developer stumbled onto it on our server, and started to spread the word. Microsoft hung those guys out to dry when it came to .NET, so they were pretty happy to find an alternative.”

“But there hasn’t been a peep out of anyone about Clarion.NET,” I objected.

“Well, they’re all a little embarrassed about using Clarion. But that doesn’t change the color of their money. And I don’t mind telling you there are a lot of FoxPro developers out there, and the cash infusion couldn’t have come at a better time.”

“And now you’re getting ready to release Clarion.NET 2.0?”

“Right. The FoxPro guys are loving it. But that’s not why you’re here.”

I raised an eyebrow, which is not easy to do when your head is spinning.

“It has to do with our newest template set. Maybe its best if I just show you.” We left the cubicle warren and went down another hallway to a door marked DWIM Lab. Deep Code opened the door and I saw another maze of cubicles, but with much shorter walls. In each cubicle sat a chimpanzee, hammering at the keyboard with both hands and working the mouse with a foot.

“I hope they aren’t writing Clarion.NET 3.0,” I said.

Deep Code laughed. “This is our custom programming division. We used to use humans for this, but that’s no longer necessary. You see, we’ve finally perfected it.”

“It? What's ‘it’?”

He pointed to initials on the door. “DWIM. The Do What I Mean template set. You see, while Clarion templates have always written most of the code for you, they could never write all the code. You still had to write at least some embed code. But the DWIM templates can do it all. They can detect your thoughts, and even your customer’s thoughts.”

“That sounds a little scary,” I said.

Deep Code nodded sagely. “And that’s the problem. It’s human nature to want more than is good for us. So when we turned our custom programmers loose with DWIM, they created unbelievably complex applications that did everything their customers wanted. And of course the apps were completely unusable.”

“So you went with chimps.”

“Right. Turns out that if you pair a chimp with DWIM you get some pretty dang usable software. This bunch,” he waved a hand at the room, “is writing a point of sale system for Banana Republic. It's a sweet deal for us. We picked the chimps up cheap – they’re the team that developed the UAC for Microsoft Vista. The only problem we have is the cost of fresh fruit. If something takes out the citrus crop we could be in real trouble.”

“So let me guess – you’re going to offshore the chimps?”

“Exactly. Africa is the new India, and SoftVelocity is riding the wave. Next week we will formally announce our new product.”

“And that would be?”

“Clarion for Chimps, of course.”

---

David Harms is an independent software developer and the editor and publisher of Clarion Magazine. He is also co-author with Ross Santos of Developing Clarion for Windows Applications, published by SAMS (1995), and has written or co-written several Java books. David is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA).

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Clarion Magazine ISSN 1718-9942