What is the “CODE” Thing All About?

So is it CODE, or is it EPS? It is confusing! The legal name of the company is EPS Software. In the US, it is EPS Software Corp.; in Austria; it is EPS Software GmbH. Either way, EPS is the official company name (it originally stood for Egger Programming Services). So where did the whole “CODE thing” come from?

Well, in the 1990s, we decided to launch a magazine, and magazines need names. When we started the magazine, developing “components” had just become a real thing (in the COM and Windows DNA days), and developing language-independent software, presumably using components, was a major topic of the magazine. Therefore, we decided to call the magazine “Component Developer Magazine”, or short, CoDe Magazine and the first issue came out in 2000. In fact, we always liked CODE better, but we needed to stick with “Component Developer” for a while for copyright and trademark reasons. Larry Flint of Hustler magazine fame owned his own magazine called Code Magazine, which was an unfortunate coincidence… but it resolved itself when his magazine folded after just a few issues. It did, however, lead to some embarrassing moments for readers when they directed their browsers to codemagazine.com, which redirected into Larry’s other sites.

Long story short: We ended up with a magazine called CODE Magazine, and over time, it simply made sense to also brand our training as “CODE Training” since it was the training arm of the magazine. Once we traveled down that path and considering that CODE Magazine had become a well-trusted brand, it simply made sense to brand all our other offerings and then our divisions with the “CODE” moniker.

The CODE brand is owned by a separate company called Markus Egger Inc., which is the custodian of these brands and licenses them to EPS as well as to other entities internationally. It leads to a little bit of confusion and to some awkward website and email domains, but overall, the CODE brand works out pretty well for us.