The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5)

Borland is no more.

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2003/December/19/biz/stories/01biz.htm

From what I hear, they're leaving the compiler business.
They'll be focusing on creating IDE's and thingies for drawing pretty UML diagrams.

Phillipe.Chaka.Khan
Monday, December 22, 2003

While I agree with your conclusion, I don't agree with your analysis.

Borland still does develop compilers, the mess of a product known as "CbuilderX" contains a preview of a new C++ compiler.

What Borland has lost, and hence they are "no more" is any sense of quality control, commitment to their core customer base, and a general idea of where they can profitably fit into the development tools market.

The whole ship is sinking, and anyone with a brain over in Scotts Valley should be able to figure this out. I am just beside myself on how history has repeated itself at Borland - get a new CEO in, spiff the company up, buy a bunch of crazy companies, embark on a "new direction", start cranking out shit, and then lay everyone off.

What a shame ...

Mitch & Murray (from downtown)
Monday, December 22, 2003

Yes, a real shame. My fond memories of Borland go back to Sidekick. Watching Borland these days is about as much fun as watching a corpse rot.

I wish they'd make ME the next CEO. We'd go straight back to the roots of Borland with a series of simple development tools for Linux. A Turbo-Pascal, Turbo-C, Turbo-BASIC, and a Turbo-xBASE, supported by a DBMS (Firebird?), originally targetted at console/service operation, later migrating to *SIMPLE* support for GUI applications. These phase II applications would include cross-platform support for Windows and (possibly) Macintosh, with RealBASIC being a good competitive model.

If we packaged them just like the originals, with media and *DOCUMENTATION* suited to both beginners and professionals, and sold them for prices like the original, I'm convinced we would be more profitable than any wanky enterprise software strategy.

Who wants to recommend me to Borland?? *grin*

HeWhoMustBeConfused
Monday, December 22, 2003

What is this "sell" you speak of? Is it another word for "give away for nothing"?

Open Source Weenie
Monday, December 22, 2003

Hahahahaha

Naaaaah ... I'm old-fashioned ... I buy the tools I like ... I'm one of those who likes printed manuals included with software ... I like distribution media rather than downloads ... and I hope that a small fraction of the money I pay goes into making the product better.

I think there is an untapped market for software tools in the Linux space, with developers who want to buy on the basis of trust in a brand-name. They want something that WORKS, doesn't have lots of weird dependencies, has a commercial profile, isn't written in some crazy scripting language, and they don't really care about the source code.

Let's face it, not having access to the source code did NOTHING to inhibit the take-up of Borland's early developer tools.

HeWhoMustBeConfused
Monday, December 22, 2003

Borland just released a new compiler 2 days ago so I think that bit is wrong.

Borland licenced parts of Visual Studio for use in their C#Builder product and used the C# compiler that comes freely with .NET rather than wasting money developing an identical one. People twist this into the conclusion that Borland doesn't do compilers any more.

One of Borland's problems is that it's most vocal supporters and critics are not the ones where most money is to be made. So many developers who use products such as Delphi, like myself, feel a bit annoyed and disappointed when Borland focuses on other things.

Craig
Monday, December 22, 2003

Bring back the big software boxes, I say. I still have my copy of Turbo Pascal 1.5 for Windows, which is roughly cubed size, and included 7 reasonably thick books.

I also had a few copies of Turbo C, but I'm not sure what happened to it, or what was included.

Rhys Keepence
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

The article says Borland has a new "sales paradigm"; this phrase means it has been taken over by a load of jargon spewers who have lost the oremus.

It is concentrating on 'six figure sales' and leaving the rest to a distribution channel. What this means is that it is giving up 35% of its income from its core products to middlemen who will add nothing to core value - do you think car manufacturers would have a dealer network if they could send the cars in the post, or you could download them from the server.

How many companies are going to want to buy a few hundred Delphi licenses to get into the six figures you need to do business with Borland.? Meanwhile there are thousands of individual developers and small shops who are using, or would use Delphi, that are getting the impression they are being shafted.

Stephen Jones
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

As usual, Borland demonstrates their incompetence when it comes to sales and marketing, despite having such a useful product.

T. Norman
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

The new "sales paradigm" was probably made necessary because of the reduction in staff. Another PHB decision -- they think they can "save money" by laying off the people who support and sell their products.

T. Norman
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

If I were the Borland CEO, I would stop yanking out new unfinished products, and start improving the existing C++Builder and Delphi products. The first thing would be to fix ALL known bugs and provide free service packs, then provide a series of well thought-out upgrades with a clear direction for the next five years. I would not 1. try to compete with Visual Studio directly by bringing out C#Builder, 2. release a new WebSnap/DataCrap technology every year, 3. buy other companies, 4. focus on anything else than IDEs and compilers.

But who am I?

Frederik Slijkerman
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Here's a new review of JBuilder X, for what it's worth.

http://www.activewin.com/reviews/software/devl/jbuilderx/index.shtml

Phillipe.Chaka.Khan
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

It's interesting how Borland has completely abandoned the hobbyist market that made the company what it is. Turbo Pascal was *the* standard for hobbyist programmers until Windows came along. And Delphi became a cornerstone of hobbyist developers after that. It's just so much simpler and cleaner and hassle free than using C++ (which, don't get me wrong, is a good language, but if you're coding at home in your off hours, then you want something fast, clean, and reliable). Delphi compile speeds for even good-sized projects have been instantaneous since the days of the Pentium II.

But they finally gave it up a few years ago when they ditched the $80 / $500 / $1000 pricing structure for Standard / Professional / Enterprise editions of Delphi. Now they have two versions. The $100 version is license restricted and cannot be used for commercial development of any kind. And the next step up is the $1000+ package. With Microsoft selling restriction-free C# kits for $100, what's the point in going with Borland's overpriced version of the same thing?

In my mind, Borland died several years ago.

Junkster
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

PARDON !

C# is 100$. Where did you get this information?. Where can i buy it?

Questioner
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

You can get the academic version for that price I think.

Stephen Jones
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Just to clarify that "C# is free?" question... the .NET SDK that includes the C#, VB.NET, and JScript .NET compilers and a GUI debugger is a free download. You only pay for the Visual Studio IDE, and you can use the free SharpDevelop IDE instead of that.

Chris Nahr
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

ERP for Visual C# .NET Standard (Full Packaged Product) is $109. You can get it from buy.com for $92.61

Just me (Sir to you)
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Sad to see Borland rot away.....but then it was fated to do so the day it brought dBase and got distracted from its core business of compilers/development tools.

I do not think there ever will be any code as useful as compact and as bug free as Turbo pascal . I remember the whole Turbo pascal compiler fitted on a floppy with enough space left to fit many of your programs ands source.

The interesting thing about Turbo pascal was that it was using it own (hand tuned assembly language) pascal library for the compiler/IDE as well as the generated executable, it used to copy assembly code from its own running executable into into the one it was making...which is what made it so compact....something I do not think has been understood or duplicated by the "as long as it fits on a dvd it is ok" crowd at Microsoft or elsewhere.

Ironically even on those 8088 systems the Pascal compiler would compile faster than Visual C++ does today....that is progress for you!

Then ofcourse how many know that Borland had Turbo Prolog too :-)

Code Monkey
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Turbo Prolog lives on as Visual Prolog: http://www.visual-prolog.com/

Junkster
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

I'd just like a C++ IDE for Linux that didn't suck. Emacs and gdb aren't doing it for me anymore. Anjuta has good project management tools, but it constantly locks up and crashes.

I'm buying an Apple primarily because better tools are available for the Mac than Linux. XCode doesn't look half bad for a free product. And Jobs is serious about supporting developers.

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Look up DDD for debugging on Linux. Vim doesn't do a bad job as a text editor (especially after a couple hours of tweaking from hints at vim.org), but I haven't found an editor I really like on Linux. I switched to Mac a while back after giving up
the Linux user experience. Codewarrior for my IDE with BBEdit set up as the external editor. I love it.

Lally Singh
Wednesday, December 24, 2003