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Borland C++ Builder (2015)

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11–20 of 55 posts

Re: Borland C++ Builder (2015)

#11
I think Borland is great example of what happens when you don't care about backward compatibility and try to milk your customers all the time.

Even since Turbo Pascal, and with Delphi, every new version (5->6->7) of a compiler/tool required new compiled libraries/components. Eventually a lot of shops (and Delphi and C++ builder were huge in xUSSR, for example) stopped to care and moved on to Java/C#.

Re: Borland C++ Builder (2015)

#12

Looks like C++ Builder is still available. Its way expensive and the licensing for community edition is very prohibitive...if you make more than 5k or you have more than 5 people on your team you need to pay up. And you practically need to sell a kidney to afford it. That sucks because this IDE looks really neat, but its def not worth the money in my opinion unless you are a larger company already Community edition:…

Is $500/year really the going rate for a kidney? That's like the price to rent some GPUs for an overnight training job. I think it's perfectly reasonable that Embarcadero makes their software free to use until it's helped you earn at least 10x that much revenue, on top of it being a flat rate. Most companies just divide their offerings into strictly commercial / non-commercial.

Re: Borland C++ Builder (2015)

#13
I use the newest version (Alexandria) of C++ Builder everyday in my job since other developers in the company have legacy software from the 90s.

You can't really open old projects in new versions of the software. Some devs use VMs to develop on the old versions of Builder.

The documentation and the example code for the C++ side are horrible, because they are focused on Delphi. You must know Delphi to figure out how to use the libraries in C++. The documentation for Delphi also feels very light and outdated. The latest books about it are from the begining of the 2000s and there are very few Youtube videos about it.

Sometimes Intellisense stops working and you don't know why. Sometimes some access violation happens and the debugger gives you no hint why.

The price is also expensive. I think my company spent 2300€ for a single license and they expect you to renew every year.

Re: Borland C++ Builder (2015)

#14
post #12

Looks like C++ Builder is still available. Its way expensive and the licensing for community edition is very prohibitive...if you make more than 5k or you have more than 5 people on your team you need to pay up. And you practically need to sell a kidney to afford it. That sucks because this IDE looks really neat, but its def not worth the money in my opinion unless you are a larger company already Community edition:…

Is $500/year really the going rate for a kidney? That's like the price to rent some GPUs for an overnight training job. I think it's perfectly reasonable that Embarcadero makes their software free to use until it's helped you earn at least 10x that much revenue, on top of it being a flat rate. Most companies just divide their offerings into strictly commercial / non-commercial.

There are 4 different editions. $500/year is the cheapest of those 4 editions.

https://www.embarcadero.com/app-development-tools-store/cbui...

Re: Borland C++ Builder (2015)

#16
post #12

Looks like C++ Builder is still available. Its way expensive and the licensing for community edition is very prohibitive...if you make more than 5k or you have more than 5 people on your team you need to pay up. And you practically need to sell a kidney to afford it. That sucks because this IDE looks really neat, but its def not worth the money in my opinion unless you are a larger company already Community edition:…

Is $500/year really the going rate for a kidney? That's like the price to rent some GPUs for an overnight training job. I think it's perfectly reasonable that Embarcadero makes their software free to use until it's helped you earn at least 10x that much revenue, on top of it being a flat rate. Most companies just divide their offerings into strictly commercial / non-commercial.

If you make 5k 500 is 1/10 of your yearly income. That is a pretty big amount, especially when you take out taxes and operating expenses. Thats why I said it isn't worth it UNTIL you are a bigger business.

Re: Borland C++ Builder (2015)

#17
post #4
post #3

Embarcadero is pretty much in the business of soaking customers locked into Borland's old products for as much as they're willing to pay, hence why the IDEs cost an arm and a leg while competitive products are relatively cheap or free.

Meanwhile, the only real C++ RAD alternative to C++ Builder in 25 years was C++/CX, killed by internal WinDev politics. And maybe by .NET 9, all the kinds of Delphi workloads will be finally supported by Native AOT and low level coding capabilities. All enterprise products cost an arm and a leg, and at that level it hardly matters, license costs aren't where usually project budgets get burned.

>And maybe by .NET 9

If I take look on roadmaps and apply developer velocity of MAUI, WinForms and WPF it will take many more versions.

Re: Borland C++ Builder (2015)

#18

Looks like C++ Builder is still available. Its way expensive and the licensing for community edition is very prohibitive...if you make more than 5k or you have more than 5 people on your team you need to pay up. And you practically need to sell a kidney to afford it. That sucks because this IDE looks really neat, but its def not worth the money in my opinion unless you are a larger company already Community edition:…

They have abandoned community editions - it is several years behind the pro edition, broken on high-DPI monitors, no code-completion/navigation. No plans to release a new version.

Re: Borland C++ Builder (2015)

#19

I have to repost https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28491963 again: My main problem with delphi: it is "too proprietary". It was a very productive IDE in the 90's or early 2000's but lost their path and never recovered. Some new versions broke compatibility with previous version's components. There was the case where you paid a good amount of money on some proprietary components and they simply wouldn't work in the…

what I want is terminal based turbo-C++ ide with the plugin architecture of vscode and solid integration of code browsing. & yes I can do it with vim or emacs but I dont wanna.

Now people have more modern versions of the UI, it should be possible.

Re: Borland C++ Builder (2015)

#20
My first IDE when I started to be excited about programming! I vividly remember a book that was about teaching C++ to kids; I devoured it and spent a glorious summer just fiddling with what I thought was very complex code at the time. How time flies...
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