Brief History of Codeguru!

[MrBeans]

Hi,
Being with CG for sometime now I would like to more about this forum.

Who founded CG?
Who is funding CG?
When was CG formed, how did it come into existence?
Will CG continue to expand in infinitely in terms of its members, threads and all the data?

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?

Thanks

[cilu]

It was originally created by Zafir Anjum, who later sold it to EarthWeb. (The whereabouts of Zafir Anjum are unknown nowadays. Some say he left for India, others that he is travelling the country side of US, others that he spends most of the time on a snowboard. ) Today, CodeGuru is owned by JupiterMedia (scroll down to the bottom of this page to get more links).

You can read about the foudation and evolution of CodeGuru in this Interview with Tom Archer by Chris Maunder, which is ironically located at CodeProject.

I can tell you that the first registered member of the forum is Frederic J.F. Estrampes (03-19-1998).

As for limitations of members I don't think there will ever be something like that. Also, I think that JM will find additional storage support for the database when needed, so I would not worry about that either.

[Ejaz]

Furthermore, have a look at this

[cilu]

Furthermore, have a look at this

Don't believe everything that is written there.

[Ejaz]

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.

[Ejaz]

Look what I found. Hmmm, Zafir Anjum is really a mysterious personality.

[Xeon]

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.

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 CodeGuru start?" and "Can someone tell me the history of CodeGuru?" Sigh.

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. CodeGuru 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 CodeGuru 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 CodeGuru'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 CodeGuru 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 CodeGuru.

Chris, somewhere in around 1997, left and went to developed his own baby, code-named by the New York Times as "CodeGuru's Nemesis".
The official name later became CodeProject, and today, it's a very worthy rival of CodeGuru, 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 CodeGuru 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, CodeGuru 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 CodeGuru 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 CodeGuru!

However, nothing is forever. With all ups will come downs. With all joys will come grief. In mid 2003, the team of CodeGuru'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 CodeGuru 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 CodeGuru 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.

[cilu]

MVP means Microsoft's Valuable Programmer.

No. It means Most Valuable Professional.

Now I shall return to my grave and awake a thousand years hence.

That is a wise decision.

[scorpionking]

nice to read that very informative background of this board

[MrBeans]

From Mr. Bean, aka Rowan Atkinson:

I'll answer your questions below.


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.
Amen.

Good day,
Xeon.

Thanks Xeon for that big story but I think your above comment is surely wrong check out question number 5 in MVP FAQs. And that is the reason I asked that question.

I wonder what makes CG better than less known Microsoft Forums

[Ejaz]

I wonder what makes CG better than less known Microsoft Forums

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.

[Ejaz]

Xeon was called a kid by some programmer who's surname was "Heffner".

Did u mean... Haensler? Lothar Haensler?

/ EDIT: Got it, its...Bill Heffner

[MrBeans]

You said it right Ejaz . to CG

[Notsosuperhero]

Very well said Ejaz.

The people here at CG are terrific people. I actually found this site through MSDN when I first started WinAPI programming, I was looking for something and it had this link, so I went I signed up on the forums to ask my noobish question, and they were so nice, and now here I am, Ejaz and Cilu lpcked me in a closet until I said I would stay.

[gstercken]

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. 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

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 CodeGuru. 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.