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About

October 15, 2007

My name is Danny Thorpe.  There are a few of us around the world;  this particular instance is a husband, gentleman farmer, adventure traveler, photographer, garage alchemist, woodworker, author, and builder of peculiar contraptions.  I also build software for fun and profit.

As a junior engineer at Borland, I was witness to the creation of Delphi. Over the years I contributed to the development of Delphi’s runtime library, VCL component library, IDE, compiler and language on Windows, Linux and .NET platforms. I’ve had the enormous pleasure of working closely with Anders Hejlsberg, Chuck Jazdzewski, Eli Boling, and many other software wizards in Borland’s heyday.

At Google, I helped define and create the Google Gears API, enabling browser web apps to store structured data on the local client and even run while disconnected from the network (a neat trick for a web app). 

At Microsoft, I built a series of client-side web controls to access Windows Live web services (Contacts and Photos) in web apps.  As a by-product of those web controls, I also built a client-side browser cross-domain communication channel API for JavaScript web apps based on a technique originally conceived by Scott Isaacs, creator of DHTML and architect of Windows Live.

At Cooliris, I helped build the PicLens immersive 3D environment browser plugin.  I implemented the text display system (using FreeType to load TrueType fonts), single and multiline text editor, text layout engine, and glyph substitution to support the display of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters in the PicLens graphics environment - all on multiple browsers, operating systems, and hardware platforms.

 I’m currently engaged at Microsoft (yes, again), this time in an incubation group in the Visual Studio developer tools division.  More details as our projects go public.

Other references:

Past employment blogs:

I am the author of Delphi Component Design (Addison Wesley 1996), have published articles in several magazines including Dr Dobb’s Journal, PC Magazine, Delphi Journal, and The Architecture Journal, and have been the technical editor of more than 35 Delphi books. (I sort of lost count) 

I live in the Santa Cruz mountains in California with my lovely wife Cindy and a motley crew of furred and feathered extended family.