I returned from EclipseCon 2006 with renewed respect for the many developers all over the world that are contributing to the Eclipse platform. Sure, there’s a lot of open source software out there, but Eclipse stands alone in terms of quality and imagination.

I chatted briefly with Todd Nielson, CEO of Borland. He had some interesting comments on the direction of software and the role of open source. Todd was with Microsoft for many years and confirmed that Microsoft has only two profitable products: Office and Windows. All others lose money or break even. SQL server might make a little money, though. This curious fact explains a lot of Microsofts business strategy.

I also interviewed Ward Cunningham, which was a lot of fun. The complete podcast of the interview is available on SQLSummit.com. After the interview, we chatted for an hour or more. We talked about all kinds of things, much of which revolved around novel applications for Atmel AVR microcontrollers. The most interesting thing I learned was the idea of trying many ideas quickly. This seems to be central to Wards thinking.