Programming Forum Warning

[Beth Sweet]

Yay Brandon! Brandon Martus, making CD readers lives easier since.... ummm, when were these forums started?

Edit: Brandon Martus, making CD readers lives easier since May 2001/Fall 98

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by Beth Sweet

...since.... ummm, when were these forums started?...

Yet another use for the waybackmachine !!!

If you search the waybackmachine for chiefdelphi.com you will find an old copy of Chiefdelphi.com from 1998. Even at that early date, the ChiefDelphi.com website already featured "Our famous discussion forums"

To find the REAL roots of the ChiefDelphi.com fora, you have to use the waybackmachine to find pchs-delphi.com, our old name (dorky as it was but what it seemed like a good idea at the time). If you do, you will find an old copy of pchs-delphi.com from June, 1997 that has a reference to the discussion forum.

Bottom line, from its earliest days, Team 47 has had the vision of using the web to be more than a "look at me and my team" type tool but a resource for team to team and person to person communciation. Remember that at this time in FIRST, they sent out updates via FAX machine that literally took multiple days to get out to every team on their list (really, no kidding).

I say it often and I know I run the risk of sounding braggadocious, but the ChiefDelphi.com site did not arrise spontaneously as a sort of cosmic www_accident_com.

It is what it is today because Team 47 had a vision and decided to build that vision brick by brick.

Many folks have worked hard to build this place on the web. Brandon certainly is high among those who have worked the hardest, but others, many not even associated with Team 47, have made signifcant contributions as well.

So, I lift my glass to ChiefDelphi.com, to Brandon, yes, but also to all those (perhaps even, you, fair reader) who made it great and continue to keep it great.

May it remain great for years to come.

Joe J.

[Venkatesh]

Who ran it before Brandon and co?

[Elgin Clock]

Originally Posted by Venkatesh

Who ran it before Brandon and co?

Hey Grady, are you listening?? I think we need a "History of the CD forums" in the FIRST 101 series!

I am interested as well. Was Brandon there from the beginning, or was there a BB* time in CD forums history??


*That's "Before Brandon" btw. lol

[Joe Johnson]

Originally Posted by Venkatesh

Who ran it before Brandon and co?

Oddly enough, we had an engineer at Delphi who had his own website (a very strange idea back in 1996 - I think it was a site devoted to discovering cheat codes for PC games). Anyway, he kept talking about these script languages with unfamiliar names like Perl, CGI, tcl, etc. that he found that let him run a kind of home brew discussion forum on his site.

I begged him to help us get a discussion forum running on PCHS-Delphi.com. The rest is history.

As to who ran it, Brian (the Delphi Engineer), started things off. I personally hacked some of the scripts (though not many). When Brian opted to accept a buy out (Who could turn down lump sum payment of 12 months salary to go find another job?), we hunted around a bit and eventually heard that our lead teacher, Mike Martus, had a son who maybe could learn this Perl/CGI stuff.

I will tell you flat out, I have never seen a person learn so much so fast. Brandon is just amazing. And not just because he is a quick learner. He works REALLY HARD too, but even beyond that, he has vision.

When the Chief Delphi Team Leaders asked if we could have this or that feature, he always found a way. Even better, he suggested his own cool advanced features and dug into "real" software packages (like Vbulletin and others) that make this site hum.

Joe J.

[Nuttyman54]

Originally Posted by Joe Johnson

I will tell you flat out, I have never seen a person learn so much so fast. Brandon is just amazing. And not just because he is a quick learner. He works REALLY HARD too, but even beyond that, he has vision.
Joe J.

This probably isn't the right place to say it, but THANKS FOR EVERYTHING BRANDON (and the rest of the CD admins)! i've now officially become a CD addict.