  |
Spotlight on: Gobe Software, Inc. |
In the heart of the Silicon Forest, a young software company is working on the final touches of a new product which will greatly expand the range of productivity applications available for the BeOS. Gobe (pronounced "go' - be") Software boasts a small, seasoned team of engineers, several of whom broke off from Claris to start developing for the BeOS. Though relatively unknown among BeOS developers, Gobe has quietly been working for more than a year on their upcoming release, Gobe Productive, an application that provides word processing, spreadsheets, graphics, charting, and presentations, all in one neat package.
In the midst of their final push to ready the Sneak Peek Demo version of Gobe Productive in time for the Be Developers Conference, Bruce Q. Hammond, VP and Senior Software Engineer, took some time out to talk with us about the company and their experiences developing for the BeOS over the past year.
Developer Spotlight: First of all, what's the story behind the name of your company, Gobe?
Bruce Q. Hammond: The name "Gobe" was arrived at after some considerable debate. We were originally called Landslide (a whole story unto itself). We arrived at the name Gobe by a variety of routes. First of all, we all learned how to play "Go" last year, when a new member joined our team (their logo features Go stones in each of the letters.) Coincidentally, at the time, the wife of one of our team members was working on the "Giants of the Gobi" dinosaur exhibit for AT&T. On a more mundane note, when we started looking for a domain name, we discovered that it was difficult to find a name that was simple to remember and to type that hadn't already been taken. Thus "Gobe Software" was christened.
DS: How were you first introduced to the BeOS and what compelled you to try it?
BQH: We first saw BeOS in late 1995 or early 1996 when most of us were working at Claris Corp. An engineer had seen a demo of BeOS someplace and obtained his manager's approval to get a 66 Mhz BeBox.
DS: What was your reaction to the BeBox when you saw it in action?
BQH: We were impressed by the responsive feel of the system and how usable it seemed with lots of processing going on in the background. An OS that was inherently SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing) was very appealing.
DS: What compelled you to leave your previous employer and start developing for the BeOS full time?
BQH: We wanted the opportunity to do a design from scratch for document creation. An OS that had been built from the ground up over the last two years inspired us to think in a new direction, and break from the historical approach.
DS: You've said that many of you worked together before. Tell us about your team...
BQH: Right now we've got seven people; six developers, and one test engineer. All of us were involved with ClarisWorks in some capacity. Scott Holdaway (project lead) is one of the original authors of ClarisWorks along with Bob Hearn. Tom Hoke and Scott Lindsey worked on ClarisWorks after it was bought by Claris and were key contributors to its development. Carl Grice and I came a few years later in the development and worked on ClarisWorks until we left to form Gobe Software. Ben Chang is our new head of SQA and was the all-time bug-finding champion on ClarisWorks.
Several of us have marketing and startup experience in our background, so we all bring something different to the table.
DS: How long have you been working together?
BQH: We've all been together for at least 4 1/2 years, because that's when I joined and I'm the newest guy. But some of us have been working together for over 10 years, and four of the team actually went to college together.
DS: Could you tell us a little something about the project you've been working on for the past year, Gobe Productive?
BQH: Gobe Productive is an extensible document creation system that integrates a wide variety of functions in one application. Gobe Productive's different parts can be used separately, or they can be combined together within a single document. Gobe Productive is written from the ground up to take full advantage of the power of the BeOS, and is the only application for the BeOS that enables users to create full-featured documents using a single piece of software.
Gobe Productive in Action
 |
Screenshot 1: Word Processing in Gobe Productive. |  |
Screenshot 2: Spreadsheets in Gobe Productive. |  |
Screenshot 3: Presentations in Gobe Productive. |
DS: After a year of developing on the BeOS, what are your impressions of the operating system? How does development on the BeOS compare to developing for other platforms?
BQH: The BeOS itself is quite stable. Bugs that require system restart are pretty rare. This aspect alone improves programmer productivity considerably. Also, after a 1 1/2 years of development by 7 engineers crashing code 12 hours a day we have yet to suffer any data loss or disk corruption. The BeOS is not only fast and fun, it is rock-solid.
On the other hand, the BeOS is new and the newness carries a cost in certain areas. For example, the challenge of learning a new API and a new bag of tricks for getting things to work well. Good strategies for taking advantage of threads and SMP require a shift in thinking.
As for development tools, all the basics are there to be productive; We have been pleased with the useability of the Metrowerks Compiler and IDE. However, sometimes you have to make-do, do without, roll your own or wait for some other developer to pick-up the ball. We have also put to good use various command line tools that have been ported to BeOS. Much of that has been invaluable.
DS: Which features of the BeOS do you like most? appreciate the most? depend on the most?
BQH: Most areas of the OS kits give extremely fast performance. Our app takes advantage of the speed of the system to provide a greatly improved experience to the end-user.
DS: When you made the jump to the BeOS, what, if anything, did you perceive as being the risk of developing for the BeOS?
BQH: We faced the risk that the BeOS software market would not materialize or that Be would not be able to execute its business plan. As we started development there was industry speculation that Be would be acquired by Apple. When that did not happen, we were at a crossroads. We decided to stay the course because at that time, the Mac clone market was thriving.
On the technical side, we had concerns that we might get mired in problems or bugs in a new OS that we could not easily overcome or would slow development. That really never happened -- in fact, we have been very pleased with our development progress.
DS: What are your impressions of the BeOS software market at the moment?
BQH: Right now, we're more optimistic than ever. We are watching the market take off. With the announcement that Intel is supporting Be's development efforts, the market for BeOS software is becoming an economic reality.
DS: How does the new Intel version (R3) of the BeOS affect your development plans?
BQH: This certainly looks like huge potential to be tapped. We are more optimistic than ever about the future of Be and BeOS. As developers, we may be in the right place at the right time. The first way we will be taking advantage of the Intel port is by getting a few notebook computers that can run BeOS.
DS: Will you be porting "Gobe Productive" to x86 right away? Will this be difficult?
BQH: We already have the main part of our application running on x86. We're now in the process of tracking down bugs of ours which have only become visible from the Intel side. When we release the final product, it will run on both platforms.
DS: When do you plan to release Gobe Productive?
BQH: We will be releasing a Sneak Peek Demo of Gobe Productive later this week, which will be available for ftp from our web site, www.gobe.com, and from BeWare on the Be web site. We anticipate a final release in June of 98.
DS: What would you like to see from Be and the BeOS in the future, with regard to development and performance?
BQH: Be has done an outstanding job on the BeOS to date. It is incredible that they were able to deliver the Intel port of BeOS several weeks ahead of schedule.
Of course, we have a laundry list of things we would like to see in the future. First, we'd like to see the Intel side mature, with good compiler optimization, and lots more technology deployed. It would be great to see multiple compilers and debuggers available -- Intel, GCC, etc. We would also like to see more third party development tools, such as high-end class browsers, heap diagnostic tools, etc. We're also eager to have the printing architecture mature further. Document import and export is an important issue to us, obviously. It would be very helpful to have support from vendors who could bring that kind of technology over to the BeOS. Considering how motivated, responsive and nimble Be has proven itself to be, I have no doubt that the future of BeOS development is very bright.
Is there a company or product that you think should be in the Spotlight? Please let us know! Write to devservices@be.com
