Why Toad

The question was raised recently: "Why Toad?" Replies were given. I wish to offer mine.

1. The users

Toad users have always been at the front and center of what makes Toad the phenomenon it is. Their passion, dedication, ideas and commitment to their product is unlike anything else I've ever seen. It is their product. They conceived it, help design it, talk about it, share it, help one another learn it. They are committed to the idea that users can have a profound impact on the software they use if they are vocal and participate in the development process. They are the smartest Oracle professionals on earth. To our competitors I say "our users are better than your users."

2. The management

From the beginning Quest management has been remarkably prescient in leaving Toad in the hands of users and its development in the hands of the users and the development team. "Leave them alone, leave the process alone" has been stated repeatedly, first by Vinny Smith, then Juli Ackerman, and others since, some key names which immediately surface- Lisa Waugh, Ramon Graham, Rony Lerner, Lenka Vanek, Claudia Fernandez, John Pocknell. These are all people who eventually "got it," and understood how to move the product forward and protect the team who wrote it. I'm proud to have known all these people and have been inspired at seeing their own personal growth over the years as well as their great labors and intelligence in pushing Toad into the far reaches of the planet. I'm convinced that Toad would not be Toad today if anyone else had bought it. To our competitors I say "our managers are better than your managers."

3. The development team

The team consists of what Netflix calls "Highly Responsible People." Although I'm the fortunate guy who gets to call himself the development manager the reality is the team is more akin to a Republic, or rather a loose coalition of member states (team members), with each person in complete charge of their work. The people we have always sought are ones who know how to manage themselves, are mature and driven and want complete responsibility for the work they do. They want to answer directly to users. They don't want to hide behind a process. When they make mistakes they see those as learning opportunities. They want to be deeply engaged with users. A quality they absolutely must come to possess is humility. I can't say enough about the importance of humility and the radical notion that our users are smarter than we are. Much smarter. Plus we possess some secret weapons, guys who can simply out-code most engineers I've ever known. They're ridiculously fast. To our competitors I say "our development team is better than yours." (N.B. this doesn't conflict with my statement about humility. Humility is truth, it's not false modesty, and the truth is we are better because we listen more closely to our users).

4. The product

Toad is simply a great product. If I didn't know that from the love users have for it I would know it from the fact that all our competitors rip us off. It's a deep, deep tool. Nothing else comes close to having the depth of Oracle expertise Toad has, because we have great users who engage a willing development staff. Toad is also quirky and kind of corny in how it adheres to a traditional MDI style interface. People love it. We do get complaints at times from some who want to remake it into something which looks up to date and like their other fancy neo uber glass style Mickey transparent ribbonized candy cane Goofy kid play things. But if we did that we know we'd be strung up the flag pole naked, with tar applied to us, feathers sticking everywhere.  I was outside walking tonight in the fog. There was a big toad in the road just sitting there. What an amazing creature! Full of bumps and ugliness. But the ugliness makes it irresistible. You just have to love a toad. Some would like to kiss it and turn it into something beautiful. But it would no longer be a toad. If we let Toad continue to be a toad, I assure you "our product is better than the competitors product." Millions of devoted fans aren't wrong.

5. The beta program

Constancy is key. Frequency of release is critical. We don't do monolith. We're not set up to produce massive annual releases, that's not our strength. Our strength lies in how fast we can churn out releases. And boy do we do that! How about two releases a week, every week of the year? Given the increased frequency of betas we do as releases near, we probably average around 120 fully useable releases every year. We've been doing this for 13 years. Using those numbers as rough averages we have produced over 1,500 product releases of Toad. Almost every one of those has been done with some level of user input. To those looking for a better product elsewhere I ask "is their beta program anything like Toad's?"

6. It ribbits

In Conclusion

Toad has the best users, the best managers, the best development team, the best beta program and is the best Oracle tool the world has ever seen. It also ribbits when it starts. It has been that way for 15 years without wavering one day. Not one! Our development team has been ramping up lately and we are the strongest team we have ever been. Why have we been ramping up? Because we have a very exciting long term vision which will propel us through the years ahead. It is a vision which, if fully realized, has the potential to transform how you do your daily work.

To those not yet on board I say it's time to get on board, time to start experiencing Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Come along with us and help us to create the future.

Mark