Meh: Earlier I found out OWL is a web ontology language and that it has nothing to do with the OWL that was wrapped in a box of Borland compilers (Wikipedia on Object Windows Library). Alfons should know more about OWL, unless he hand-coded all his Pascal and C++ code the WinAPI way. I can’t remember. What I do remember was the shock in the developer world when Borland decided to drop OWL in favour of VCL. The rest is history. Of course (with all things legacy), OWL has been picked up by enthusiasts. Slightly related: why do I still use the T-prefix in every other program language I program in? Where did that come from? I presume it was always part of OOP world.
I saw a picture of a person I went to school with and I exclaimed something like ‘Hey, that’s that guy that had all the girls in class swoon’. Afterwards, I thought that wasn’t appropriate, but then, maybe this is what happens after many years. Think of all these thoughts people have when they remember me (‘Oh god, those were the guys with the straight 9s or 10’). It wasn’t my fault. Having Alfons as a formidable competitor was just way too tempting. This also reminds me of the first years of secondary school [which is more or less comparable to the first years of highschool]: for straight A’s students we were actually loosely managed by our parents. The secret of studying is to take things seriously when you’re twelve years old. The other secret is that you obviously need parents who are not too overly involved and give kids the freedom to experiment.