Brief History of Codeguru!

Furthermore, have a look at this ( http://www.dev-archive.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1073532&postcount=20)

Don't believe everything that is written there. ;)

:) I understand. But it did reveal good names from the past, which are around us no more. They carried the flag when none of us was around. There contribution brought CG to where it is right now.

From Mr. Bean, aka Rowan Atkinson:
Hi, Being with CG for sometime now I would like to more about this forum. Who founded CG? Who is funding CG?...
I'll answer your questions below.

Are there any engineer's from Microsoft around here keeping an eye on some of the occasional bugs, suggestions, recommendation etc made by the CG members?
Those guys with MVP titles under their avatars or signatures etc. are all Microsoft engineers, either directly or indirectly affiliated with Microsoft. MVP means Microsoft's Valuable Programmer. :wave:

Anyway, your sense and aura of noobish-ness really irritates me. Why is it that every now and then, folks would post threads like "When did dev-archive start?" and "Can someone tell me the history of dev-archive?" Sigh. :rolleyes:

Anyway, whenever there's such questions, I'll always be one of those kind enough to explain. What qualifies me to explain all the history and facts?
Simply because......look at the date I joined. I may no longer be the one ranked No. 7 in terms of most amount of posts, but my "joined date" far surpasses most noobs here with 6000 posts and above. Aye, aye.

Anyway, yes. dev-archive was founded by Zafir Anjum. When the site first started, he was the one who did a one-man show : created sample projects(although pretty buggy) and posted them on the dev-archive main site. That idea(very new during those days) was an instant hit.
Check out the 829 issue of The Wall Street Journal published in 8th June 1995.
Zafir was seen photographed with Microsoft head mogul Bill Gates and Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison over several plates of chicken chop. Basically, the idea was about dev-archive's mighty revolution and how it changed the Internet landscape and how it changed the way we program and share data. The article also wrote about how dev-archive brought about the rise of 3G cellphones technologies.

Later, Zafir expanded the site to include a forum and several other "frills".
The forum software during those days was almost totally text-based but very fast. There was only a simple, good old 640 * 480 banner at the top.
The threads and posts were arranged in hierchical order, so they were rather easy to read and you could see who replied to who.
In those days, daddy Xeon was called a kid by some programmer who's surname was "Heffner".

Anyway, somewhere in 1997 or so, Chris Maunder, one of Zafir's top aides and right-hand man, defected.
This is the same as Sir Lancelot, the most trusted knight of King Arthur.
Lancelot even fled with Arthur's wife, Guinevere, after betraying Arthur.
In this case, Lancelot is Chris Maunder, Arthur is Zafir and Guinevere is dev-archive.

Chris, somewhere in around 1997, left and went to developed his own baby, code-named by the New York Times as "dev-archive's Nemesis".
The official name later became CodeProject, and today, it's a very worthy rival of dev-archive, boasting the best and high quality code samples with few bugs. Chris even developed his flagship sample project, the grid control. I've forgotten the name, but it's good enough to rival those by Dundas Software and CodeJock.

Zafir later disappeared and went on to start his business focusing on Latin girls, and the throne was succeeded by a young and promising father, Tom Archer. However, Tom was succeeded later by Bradley L. Jones. Apparently, Tom got the Y2K virus, and thus had to step down.

With Bradley L. Jones at the helm, things started to boom. Like Jack Welch of General Electric, Brad led dev-archive and it's force of international programmers into a direction unseen of before ever since Bill Gates and Paul Allen sold their Windows 95.

A year later, dev-archive expanded rapidly, like the rise of China nowdays. The peak of expansion, and the era of changes, happened all in late 2000 to early 2003.
This was also the time where the forums(Visual C++ and Chit-Chat forums) were the busiest! Girls had it on with guys, guys had fun with girls.
It was basically a out-of-control rave discussion here about everything under the sun.

Best of all, during that Golden Age of dev-archive in this Chit-Chat forum, there were lots of bad guys who tried to be funny. Two clowns, who're no longer here, even had a competition to see who could create the most advanced and hi-tech GIF signatures using the forum's vbTags markup language. Imagine a line of text in gradient color that gets animated and can even blink! Right in dev-archive!

However, nothing is forever. With all ups will come downs. With all joys will come grief. In mid 2003, the team of dev-archive's most elite programmers(in terms of personality and/or coding), like Gabriel Fleseriu, Simon666, DoctorLuz, Yves_M, SolarFlare, MiCk_2002, Elrond, Irona, Deniz, Ahm, Xeon, Marina Vaillant and lots more left.

A couple of these guys returned a couple of years later. They returned to a dev-archive who had lost it's shine and brilliance. More recruits joined, and the culture eventually changed; those happy old times were lost forever and will never come back.

The future of dev-archive is uncertain and nobody knows the direction it is heading. I've spoken my piece. Now I shall return to my grave and awake a thousand years hence. Amen.

Good day,
Xeon.

nice to read that very informative background of this board

I wonder what makes CG better than less known Microsoft Forums (http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/) :rolleyes:

Well, the strength of any community lies into the people. Take a look at this Chit/Chat section. No posts count , no reputations, but still you find alot of activities going on here. At the boards you can see that the members behave in a mature manner and even if proven wrong or corrected, unlike starting usless arguments, they accept it.

Other then that, they are pretty friendly, you can see that mostly the usual participants knows the names and nicks of the other members. Its just like one big classroom, where there is no teacher around and everyone is fooling in there own way ;)

There are many who just come here when they find any problem, but there is a very good no. of people who have been spoiled by CG, (or should I say the participants of CG) so much that they just can't resist it. :cool:

You said it right Ejaz :). :thumb: :thumb: :thumb: to CG

Hehe, it's always delightful and refreshing to read Xeon... His particular style hasn't changed. :)

Thanks Xeon for that big story but I think your above comment is surely wrong check out question number 5 in MVP FAQs (https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs). And that is the reason I asked that question.Just in case you don't know Xeon: The rest of his post is about as accurate as the statement you quoted: 15% truth, 5% ignorance, 80% fantasy.

I wonder what makes CG better than less known Microsoft Forums (http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/) :rolleyes:Well, the web-based MS forums are a quite recent thing, since MS has recognized that web-based forums are quite popular. That's also the reason why we've started getting MVP awards here at dev-archive. Until recently, the vast majority of MVPs could be found in the NNTP-based public Microsoft newsgroups (msnews.microsoft.com). The interesting thing to note is the hard dividing line that goes through users of forums and newsgroups: Many regular forum visitors are not even aware of the NNTP newsgroups (although they've been around much longer), and most of the newsgroup users don't take web-based forums very seriously.

From Ejaz:
Did u mean... Haensler? Lothar Haensler?
/ EDIT: Got it, its...Bill Heffner
How did you find out, Ejaz? U dug through the ancient threads and awoken the old scrolls through your voodoo magic?
Anyway, Bill is one tough guy ruthless in his words, I tell you.
In those days, I had to bow down to him as I was a total noob(starting to learn about #include and declaring variables etc.) and had to take his ****.
However, no more! He'll have to crawl through......if he ever comes back. Ugh.

Beans:
I wonder what makes CG better than less known Microsoft Forums
Maybe that's the only part where dev-archive has beaten Microsoft. I mean, Microsoft is top in almost everything you can think of. Web browser market, OS and office suite market, software development tools' market etc...

Anyway, it's really interesting and shocking to know that the MSDN forum should get so few posts and threads per day. Ask any guy out there on the street and they would say "Can't be! A Microsoft-made site should get tens of millions of unique visitors per day!"
I guess that's the only thing Microsoft is ashamed of. :D

From Ree:
BTW, how's your grave...worming around?
Nothing much in my grave......just 4 real women with no clothes. And now my grave stinks, because the "human H20" are spilled everywhere. Gotta get out soon. :rolleyes:

Good day!
Xeon.

From LatexArt:
This remembers me of that joke about naked women and demo versions. A nasty thing to happen.
Eh Padex pal....what has naked women got to do with demo versions(of software)?
Do you mean that naked women are like demo software, whereby you can just see and not interact/use etc.? :D:D

Anyway, just for a treat, guys. Close down your Visual Studio IDE now and stop whatever you're doing. Then, visit : http://www.norse-myths.com/Movie_01.wmv and download the video.
It's not porn, but because the talking in the video were pretty dirty talk, I've muted the video.
Now, look at the girl and observe her smile and face. Pretty darn gorgeous goddess, eh??!!! Those Hollywood celebrities from A - Z would look like zombies next to her! :eek::eek::eek:

Good day,
Xeon.

From Ree:
yam you Xeon! it's not a porn but an intro like that, whatelse if not a scene from a porn
Very smart! However, you've neither solid proof or evidence that it's a scene from a porn clip. In fact, it could be just a girl and a guy chatting happily, like some social campaigns to promote family ties and human warmth. Or maybe it could be an advertisement about the couch or shirt etc. :cool::p

and yam one more time!...you'd successfully wasted my 2 precious minutes to download and see that bit...<cough>...I mean lady...my friend's pet iguana is more dashing than that skinny lady ...apparently, your taste had rust over time while you in your grave...I should open your eyes with more gorgeous lady
Yam you, Ree! Remember my video clip the other time about the blonde goddess? This one here is equally good! And now we all know that you've really bad tastes and that you prefer appreciating a reptile than a goddess, sonny.

Anyway, the same thing between this black-haired goddess and the other blonde goddess shown the other time was that they both have long hair and long, slim faces. I just discovered I love such pretty girls(not all, only such types) weeks ago.

By the way, what does Ejaz and other guys think about the girl in the clip? Heavenly when she smiles, eh? The best of the best? 11 outta 10 points?

Yam you, Ree.....and wake up now and open your eyes!!!! :mad:
Xeon.

From Ree:
errr...what video clip and what blonde goddess...Xeon, are you still down there in your grave
Hmmm....you seem to be sincerely confused about the blonde goddess. Maybe it was NoHero and Deniz to whom I showed the video to.
Go to http://www.norse-myths.com/Goddess-Pics-Clip.zip

Now, you know who's da' goddess. Or maybe you saw it, but forgot. :ehh:
Notice that this blonde goddess has the same structure and face shape as the dark-hair goddess in this post. :thumb:
I mean, com'on. According to psychology, every human(guy or girl), has a certain type of liking towards certain type of people with certain features.
(just like how some girls are attracted to certain types of guys etc.)

Don't tell me you're attracted to Drew Barrymore kind of girls. :thumbd:

Good day,
Xeon.