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Why did Borland fail?

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Re: Why did Borland fail?

#131

Post by frik »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #27
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.

Even after not using it for 10 years I miss Delphi a lot. You could click a UI together in a very short time, add some code and you had a running standalone .exe without the need of any runtime dlls. Yes, Delphi it was limited in some ways and the language was not the best, but is was (and in my opinion still is) the best way to easily create a "simple" standalone gui applications.

I remember Delphi and its Microsoft counterpart Visual Basic 1-6. They were the best RAD tools to develop GUI applications. Frontpage/Dreamweaver/GoLive were RAD tools for HTML3-4 and very good too.

I currently miss the rapid development tools we had 15 years ago. There is definitely a need for a HTML5 RAD tool - ideally with the combined functionality of JetBrains WebStorm and Adobes Dreamweaver.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#133

Post by frik »

acemarke wrote: post #94
_d8fd wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your top 2 or 3 fav productive boosts in PyCharm? I've tried RubyMine for Ruby, and I didn't like it so I went back to Sublime.

I've been a WebStorm fanboy since I purchased a license during a sale two years ago. The biggest selling point for WebStorm for me is its smart searching abilities. "Find In Files" doesn't just do text search, it's also smart enough to allow you to include or exclude matches in strings and comments. It also has a great parser that understands the structure of your code well enough to do legitimate "Find References" s…

While WebStorm and other JetBrain IDEs are great, the RAD/WYSIWYG part is missing. We had already Frontage/Dreamweaver for HTML3-4. If JetBrains would add a HTML5 WYSIWYG editor based on webkit/blink to their IDEs, it would be awesome.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#134

Post by PhantomGremlin »

alecco wrote: post #14

Not a single mention of all the dirty tricks by Microsoft?! What a shallow memory. I remember how Microsoft cornered Borland and others to use some undocumented features of their OS, then make them incompatible. Remember, back in the 90s updating software on mass scale was a PITA, end users were expected to never update. Also abusing their dominance to aggressively target key developers and contractors, copying any g…

Elsewhere in this discussion, finally someone mentioned a very "interesting" trick: Microsoft threw an obscene amount of money at the chief architect of Delphi. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9713816

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#135

Post by Joeri »

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 think the biggest problem was that between delphi 7 and delphi 2010 there wasn't a version worth paying for, even if you were an enterprise shop at the core of their delphi target market. All they did was bundle components which you could have bought yourself, and tack new features on the side, while letting the core platform go basically unmaintained. After embarcadero took over, delphi releases actually improved the core again.

I don't buy the argument that the IDE market was dead. If properly managed to cater to enterprise developer's needs, delphi could have still been big. A lot of commercial software got built with delphi not because it was affordable, but because it was better than the alternatives.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#136

Post by neuro »

acqq wrote: post #125
T-A wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg "In 1996, Hejlsberg left Borland and joined Microsoft." "Since 2000, he has been the lead architect of the team developing the language C#." http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB863034062733665000 1997: "Microsoft also offered Mr. Hejlsberg a $1.5 million signing bonus, a base salary of $150,000 to $200,000 and options for 75,000 shares of Microsoft stock. After Borland's count…

The first time I saw Hejlsberg was from this delphi easter egg:

http://www.blong.com/Undocumented/Delphi1.htm

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#137

Post by stevedonovan »

jquery wrote: post #72
voidfunc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should tell JetBrains the whole IDE market is dead.

A coworker introduced me to PyCharm after years of development in vim, and it has been an incredible productivity boost. It's painful to watch coworkers slowly fiddle around with text editors. I almost don't like telling people this because it's such a professional competitive advantage for me after switching. Even my coworkers using Sublime run into pain points that I don't (perhaps because they aren't installing al…

Paul Graham's 'Secret Weapon' ;)

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#138

Post by throw_away »

srj wrote: post #128
mikerichards wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost professional negligence. I had the same situation 15+ years ago when Eclipse was coming out and Java was on the rise. We really didn't know Java all that well and so Eclipse's auto-completion and doc popups were a godsend. The guy sitting there with Vi(m) was bogging down beyond belief. It got to the point, where we had to sit him down and tell him he needs to use the right tool for the job or get lost. I…

I guess I can't tell if this post is a troll or not. :) Someone not getting their job done is a problem. Someone using vim as their editor is not. I could understand giving that feedback ("try an IDE") but telling them their job is contingent on it is probably missing the point. Most of the people I work with seem to use vim/emacs, and it doesn't appear to be for "machismo" reasons. It's likely just what they're used…

I was that guy & never switched to an IDE because I was really good at tearing through text with the vim model. intellij's vim plugin (ideavim) is top notch. Just having auto completion, find definition, find file and rename are worth the price of admission.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#139

Post by neuro »

coderjames wrote: post #96
T-A wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your description of C#/.NET sounds like it might get me to take another look at C# in the future. I learned Windows programming on-the-job using Delphi and then thought I should investigate a "more common" C++ environment (I already knew console-based C++). Learning that _Visual_ C++ had no similar RAD environment was really shocking. My resource editor isn't attached to an an automatic code generator? Say what? Afte…

Unfortunately, I wasn't flowing in a C# environment as in a Delphi environment. It might have been the ease of composability with Delphi's VCLs.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#140

Post by hyperpallium »

mikerichards wrote: post #100
jquery wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A coworker introduced me to PyCharm after years of development in vim, and it has been an incredible productivity boost. It's painful to watch coworkers slowly fiddle around with text editors. I almost don't like telling people this because it's such a professional competitive advantage for me after switching. Even my coworkers using Sublime run into pain points that I don't (perhaps because they aren't installing al…

It's almost professional negligence. I had the same situation 15+ years ago when Eclipse was coming out and Java was on the rise. We really didn't know Java all that well and so Eclipse's auto-completion and doc popups were a godsend. The guy sitting there with Vi(m) was bogging down beyond belief. It got to the point, where we had to sit him down and tell him he needs to use the right tool for the job or get lost. I…

> We really didn't know Java all that well

I think you hit the nail on the head, IDE's are an excellent choice for when you don't know what you're doing. :p

Seriously though, auto popups of docs are very helpful for huge libraries and new codebases. I wrote a little script for that.

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