About
Hi and welcome to a corner of the internet!
My name is Glenn Dufke, you've probably already heard about me or you've come here to figure out what I'm rambling about.
I'm an Embarcadero MVP, passionate Modern Delphi developer & advocate for the Modern Object Pascal programming language.
I spend a lot of time with software- & electronics engineering and this blog is intended to share the experience and knowledge I've built over the years.
One of the things I enjoy, is interacting and learning from other developers around the globe, even though I'm introvert by nature. If you're introvert as well, I encourage you to find your tribe.
I always had a passion for writing software and understanding what makes a computer tick - all the way down to the individual components!
This has lead me down a path to explore the unknown and push the boundaries even further with technology in general, programming languages, productivity tooling and the like.
A brief walk down memory lane
Since the age of 5, I've had something to do with computers in one way or another. It started with my mom's second-hand Olivetti and Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, mostly just playing DOS games and drawing in Paintbrush.
When my brother gifted his Commodore 64 to me at age 6, I started to slowly understand BASIC when I had to load games from the datasette or some of the small games I found in magazines back then.
When I reached my 8th birthday, my grandpa gifted me a used Amiga 500 which came with a floppy of BASIC, I tried my hand at it, though I wasn't serious about learning. It was mostly games for me at the time.
Fast forward to mid 2001, my mother got a newer but used computer - now a Pentium II and Windows 98. Having turned 11, I understood much more and I got really intrigued of How do you get stuff in the computer!?. Luckily one of my brother's friends were in the process of studying computer science. I asked him of how stuff as done.
He handed me a copy of Delphi 6 and let me borrow a book.
I got instantly hooked and the whole concept of the Object Pascal programming language, visual design and the stellar documentation the product shipped with (We didn't have internet at home at the time) just made logical sense to me.
During Christmas of 2002, I was gifted my own retail copy of Delphi 7 which became my weapon of choice for a good decade before advancing to more modern Delphi versions.
I honed my skills in Object Pascal and set out to learn every corner of the language which have enabled me today to have a good foundation about software engineering and I can fairly quickly pick up on languages I have to use throughout my work.
I've long felt there's much more to explore with the Modern Object Pascal language and thus back in late 2016, I started to research and read about compiler design, something you'll also find a lot of interesting information about here.
So what's this all about
In this blog, you'll mostly encounter Modern Delphi Object Pascal related articles, occasional ramblings about tech, my programming language and compiler research I'm conducting and the direct cognitive relation a good programming language design can have - both from a teaching and general purpose higher software quality.
Some claim a programming language syntax design doesn't matter - but it does in many ways. That's how we humans interpret language after all.
- Spoiler: The Modern Object Pascal programming language are one of the best designed currently on this planet. Niklaus Wirth was a genius.
I'd highly recommend go reading his books and research material!
I hope you will find some of the information here interesting.
Socials and that jazz
You can find me on BlueSky, Delphi Praxis forums, LinkedIn or some of the bigger Delphi Developers groups on Facebook, or shoot me a good ol' email: (I also accept smoke signals and postal pigeons if you're so inclined).
Occasionally I'm out and about speaking at various conferences and online presentations - either in Danish or English.
Feel free to say hello.
