At 78, Larry Ellison represents a professional standard that anyone could envy. Despite being the world's 10th richest man, he doesn't spend his retirement years sipping cocktails on his private island but actively works as Oracle's CTO.
As one of the keynote speakers at Oracle Cloud World 2022, in an otherwise excellent presentation, he outlined goals for Oracle such as developing healthcare software.
Of course, this sounds very boring, yet what he said carried a deep ethical dimension:
“We’ve built fabulous global systems for credit, but not for health. We prioritise shopping way above health, and that is not right.”
It is not right that we devote so much time and energy to developing our financial systems, while healthcare gets almost nothing in comparison.
What I was especially glad about was that he specifically highlighted Oracle Application Express, which is increasingly becoming a focus product at Oracle. For my company, it is also our primary development tool, and I myself am an enthusiastic user.
The gist of a story I've heard many times is that in 68 days they managed to develop an application in APEX that could track vaccination rates worldwide. All of this, of course, on the Oracle Cloud.
Indeed, in APEX you can develop at least ten times ❕ faster, and the result achieved is not only robust but also of excellent quality.
I wish for all of us that even past 70 we remain able to be enthusiastic about our profession, find new directions, and share them with the world. That truly matters.
