PAST WINNERS

May 1994

Jolting Developments

By Larry O'Brien

Awards are part and parcel of an industry's maturation process. When an industry is young and tools are rare, everyone knows every tool and it is unnecessary (except for validation) to read an article listing last year's highlights. But as an industry grows, it is no longer practical for every practitioner to know every product. Eventually, individuals must make the choice to either keep up with every tool or use what they have and know to accomplish their jobs. It is when an industry has reached this level that awards become important and not merely vanity events.

Not too long ago, an interested software developer could know the entire spectrum of the software industry, and word of mouth was such that awards were unnecessary.

But ours is an industry of greyhound pace. My coworker, Eric Faurot, whose responsibilities include tracking the industry for Software Development and Business Software Solutions shows, has a wall dominated by poster-sized diagram of whorls and gyres of Mandelbrot-like complexity. Each arrow ends with an industry category and a list of representative companies. The diagram, perhaps a year old, is already hopelessly dated. In the blink of an eye, this industry has gone from one in which everyone can know everything to an industry in which it is impractical to keep pace with even one domain of interest.

It is impossible to cast a broad net over our industry. Even dividing it into categories proves a challenge. Many tools are available to the professional software developer, and some of the best are hard to categorize. This year, we settled on six categories for our Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards: books, language compilers and interpreters, programming and database utilities, design and management tools, libraries, and a purposely catch-all category: special awards.

One of the strange consequences of the breakneck pace of our industry is that it makes hardly any sense to alert people to a particular release. This is our fourth year giving awards, and it has become clear that it is the continuing quality of a product line, not individual releases, that distinguishes the best products. Descriptions of products that, by the time you read this, are probably more than halfway through their next release cycle won't do you much good. Pay attention, instead, to the product lines and companies that win on the basis of a deep commitment to quality.

All major releases of Borland's C++ and Microsoft's Visual Basic have won jolt Awards,

An honor validated by the sub-industries spun off by these products. While these two products might be known to every programmer, other winners come from smaller software houses with a consistent commitment to quality and a deep understanding of professional developers and their needs. Companies like NuMega Technologies, Blue Sky Software, and Watcom all return to the award podium on the strength of best-of-breed products.

Last year was a good year for the software industry, and our list of Productivity and Jolt winners is a combination of the obvious and the obscure. One person cannot keep up with the industry, but if you use these products and pay attention to these companies, you won't fall behind.

Software Development; May 1994

What's a Jolt?

When Steven Spielberg wanted to establish which computer workstation was that of the fiendishly productive programmer in Jurassic Park, a litter of Jolt Cola cans was the giveaway. If Jolt has become iconic enough to signify software development for the purposes of Spielberg, it's certainly appropriate as an emblem of those products that "jolted" the industry in 1993. A drink that boasts, "all the sugar and twice the caffeine," has an admirable combination of hubris, humor, and raw material— three things that are necessary in software development as well as the cola wars.

This year's product awards, which were announced at the Software Development / Business Software Solutions Shows in March, are divided into two categories: the Software Development Productivity Awards, which recognize our personal favorite productivity enhancers; and the Jolt Product Excellence Awards, which recognize products that we recommend unconditionally or that exhibit qualities developers can ignore only at their peril. The Jolt Cola Co., recognizing the critical importance of software developers to our modern world, cosponsors our awards—and always provides the beverages at our annual awards ceremony.