Re: Ideas that didn't come off

Scout wrote:

I even considered submitting this technique to Borland as part of a conference paper. Then the conference notes were published, and with Anders talking about 32 bit flat mode, I knew that my idea was both way behind the times and totally screwed.

What do you mean 32 bit flat mode? Protected mode? I remember that I had an idea of tweaking TP5.5 to use a hybrid mode that was called flat real or something like that. It was real mode but with an obscure processor flag activated to use flat memory.

I guess I'm asking to hear from others that have come up with bright ideas, to admit their failure, and tell us what, why and how.

* Creating Delphi classes in run-time. It seems that Borland did implement it later for XML.

* Maintaining a web-based virtual map of the Earth and allowing others to merge their information.

* Adding custom extension to languages (I didn't know Lisp had macros for half a century then) to allow programmers (for instance, but I used that very example) to embed SQL not as strings, but as structured code. It seems that LINQ is something alike.

* Tricking firewalls to think local applications are clients when they're really peers. Yesterday I found out that Skype does that.

Every one of those ideas I told to people at the time and *everybody* *always* laughed at me, more or less politely. There are many more. I've chosen those because someone else implemented them so I hope nobody will laugh this time... or they will laugh at someone else :-)

Why do they fail? Well, my employers don't pay me to have ideas, but to implement theirs.

--
salu2,

Nico

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