This is my first post as a new blogger. Now that most software developers are exposing themselves, it was inevitable that I do the same one day. And this day has come.
I am Martin Plante, and I've been working at Xceed Software for 7 years now. Though I was not part of the beginning of the company, founded by Daniel Côté and Odi Kosmatos, two Université de Montréal buddies, I'm responsible for one thing; the name. We were supposed to start the adventure the three of us, but I backed out at the last minute, not before convincing them "Xceed" was a cool name. I joined three years later.
I'm proud of that name. I'm damn proud of what it represents. I believe we succeeded in establishing a name that means well designed and supported libraries. But they would probably not choose this name again. It's too far in the alphabet, and our customers regularly misspell it.
Officially, I’m a Lead Developer here. Obviously, for a relatively small ISV like us, I end-up doing much more than this. I’m an architect, developer, tester, writer, and support agent. We do have people dedicated to documentation, testing and support, but I need to get involved from time to time, especially with technical support, since I know my products more than anybody else.
Those products are mostly the non-visual libraries you can find at Xceed:
Don’t be surprised if this blog is not as much active as some other developer blogs out there. My goal is not to talk about my social life, or computer stuff not related to my job, or comment the latest news the minute it comes out. I want that blog to be an open window on what I’m working on at Xceed. Sure, I’ll sometimes digress from that pious wish (it’s too easy when blogging), but I want you to get direct dev-to-dev information. You probably won’t see more than a post a week, my initial goal being to post every two weeks at the minimum.
See ya later, with my real first port.
Martin.