Why did Borland fail? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#31

Post by rodgerd » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 9:04 PM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #5

melling wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sun ignored the rise of commodity hardware. They were relying on the Internet and Wall Street bubble in the late 90's. When those both popped, a Sun took a big hit. Anyway, why does answering this help with Borland?

Sun also had an overpriced compiler, to go with the overpriced Unix running on overpriced hardware. Then it saw these replaced with free, free, and cheaper products, respectively.

Sun were, in many ways, the worst of the commercial Unixes, they just had a very loud fan base insisting they were the One True Unix. Consider how long it took to get a journaling filesystem, never mind volume management!

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#32

Post by huhtenberg » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 9:05 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #4

Aqwis wrote: post #2

You could ask the same question about companies such as Novell or Sun.

Sun ignored the rise of commodity hardware. They were relying on the Internet and Wall Street bubble in the late 90's. When those both popped, a Sun took a big hit. Anyway, why does answering this help with Borland?

> Sun ignored the rise of commodity hardware.

Sun's got nothing on SGI in that department :)

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#33

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 9:07 PM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #3

Compilers used to be something you paid money for. It took a while, but open source and I would say gcc in particular killed that. It's funny how gcc was around for a long time, but it was only in the 2000s that cash cow compilers started dying. I think that coincides a bit with Linux and OS X becoming popular for developers. For example, it wasn't until 2005 that Microsoft started providing a VS express SKU. You see…

[deleted]

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#34

Post by ExpiredLink » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 9:08 PM UTC

_ak wrote: post #16

As a former Borland employee (not for very long, 2006-2009, and actually working in their Austrian offices, which originally became part of the company through the Segue acquisition), I certainly didn't have the complete picture, but our managers, even going as far as those located in Cupertino, and later Austin, were quite open about what Borland's issue was: even with the rise of Java, they thought they could conti…

IIRC, JBuilder cost almost $500 back then. Eclipse initially wasn't better but open (for extensions) and gratis.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#35

Post by _ak » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 9:13 PM UTC

voidfunc wrote: post #29

_ak wrote: post #16

As a former Borland employee (not for very long, 2006-2009, and actually working in their Austrian offices, which originally became part of the company through the Segue acquisition), I certainly didn't have the complete picture, but our managers, even going as far as those located in Cupertino, and later Austin, were quite open about what Borland's issue was: even with the rise of Java, they thought they could conti…

Someone should tell JetBrains the whole IDE market is dead.

I'm not saying the market is still dead, but for a company like Borland, 10 years ago there was nothing they could have done to recover from Eclipse taking over the market. Even then, IntelliJ was a relative niche product (compared to the vast ubiquity of Eclipse), and JetBrains did diversify their product portfolio to both more aspects of the development lifecycle and to more specialized needs in IDEs. Anyway, my point was that Eclipse was a game-changer that triggered great change in Borland.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#36

Post by revanx_ » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 9:15 PM UTC

Borland had its moments, Delphi(RAD successor to Turbo Pascal) was a total hit with Delphi 7 being the pinacle, unfortunatelly after that all went down the hill. Later on in 2008 Embarcadero Technologies picked up Delphi and has been selling it ever since.

If anyone is interested, Delphi today is on life support and exists only because it still has a strong base of followers from the Borland time. The rapid cost of development has pushed Delphi out of reach for younger generations who are not used to paying for development tools.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#37

Post by ads_are_shite » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 9:17 PM UTC

The problem is IDES always end up shit. Even revered ones end up shitting the bed. Light weight development practises - a-la-vim will always win out in the long run.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#38

Post by codeulike » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 9:23 PM UTC

T-A wrote: post #28

adrianlmm wrote: post #10

I used Delphi for more tan 10 years, so this is what I believe it went wrong: * They lost Anders Hejlsberg * Free compilers got aceptable. * Lack of back compatibility, new VCL components from one version weren't compatible with older ones, every new versión require to biy the new components. * To expensive. * No new books to learn Delphi, they are to old. I'm still using Delphi 7 for some projects.

Pretty much my view too. Anyone who knew Delphi immediately went "OMG that's Delphi/VCL with C-like syntax!" when they saw C#/.NET ca ~2000. And once Microsoft started giving away VS Express for free in 2005, Borland's original market - IDEs and compilers for the masses - was well and truly dead. It's easy to blame management for shifting focus to enterprise software, but they had to try doing something new.

Yes, until C#/.NET came out, Delphi was much nicer to work with than either VB or Java. Delphi was originally conceived as a 'VB killer' and thats exactly what it was.

http://everything2.com/title/The+History+of+Borland+Delphi

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#39

Post by bbarn » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 9:25 PM UTC

Turbo Pascal was the first software I remember buying in a retail box. Before then it was all copied and school-given software, but something in 15 year old me really felt it was worth buying this tool.

It was. That purchase spawned a career out of my evening hobby. Then, a few years later, when I was mostly using C or VB, and only firing up Pascal for fun now and then, Delphi came out. I was super excited. Until I realized I could barely use it, and none of my local book stores had anything on it that was helpful to read.

By the time the internet came along, and I got into full time development.. .net was out, with "academic" pricing for VS 2003. That purchase brought me real jobs, at real companies.

So, for me.. Borland got me curious, got me hooked, then I switched to tools that got me money. Maybe that's because the ecosystem had changed, but I can't be the only one.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#40

Post by revanx_ » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 9:26 PM UTC

adrianlmm wrote: post #10

I used Delphi for more tan 10 years, so this is what I believe it went wrong: * They lost Anders Hejlsberg * Free compilers got aceptable. * Lack of back compatibility, new VCL components from one version weren't compatible with older ones, every new versión require to biy the new components. * To expensive. * No new books to learn Delphi, they are to old. I'm still using Delphi 7 for some projects.

I remember a few books coming out lately, Coding in Delphi from Nick Hodges comes to mind if you want to look at the latest for what Delphi has to offer.