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Why did Borland fail?

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Re: Why did Borland fail?

#231

Post by on_and_off »

kriro wrote: post #211
voidfunc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should tell JetBrains the whole IDE market is dead.

Slightly off topic but I think they would be a great acquisition target for Google. Acquire, open source, push hard. I think there's tremendous strategic advantage in providing the goto tools for programmers. Could be well worth giving up a nice revenue stream, too. [it's similar to providing scholarships and other "early access" recruiting measures]

The only way I can see this kind of acquisition make sense would be in order to push Kotlin as a Java replacement on Android. It looks like Google intends to go the Java 8 way though, so that's not terribly likely.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#232

Post by michaelbunny »

Ecio78 wrote: post #127
laumars wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By the time the internet came along, and I got into full time development.. .net was out, with "academic" pricing for VS 2003. The web was around for about decade before Microsoft .NET arrived. In fact I remember coding Delphi in an evaluation copy of the IDE given away on a cover CD from .Net magazine (not to be confused with Microsoft .NET). And then a few years later downloading a pirated copy of a beta release…

Actually I remember that Delphi was way more advanced on the TCP/IP side compared to Visual Basic. I remember downloading (for free) quite complete TCP/IP VCLs that included http, ftp, icmp etc.. compared to VB that had nothing (at least for free).

Pretty similar today.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#233

Post by frik »

wolfgke wrote: post #229
frik wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong, please test it again. In Word 2010 it still uses the Frontpage engine to output not so good HTML4 code with VML graphics. Btw. Office applications haven't changed that much since Office 97 (beside regular interface changes). Wordpress uses the TinyMCE rich text editor which uses the contentEditable/designMode API, TinyMCE is one of many such editors that try to fix many of the glitches: https://en.supp…

To clear this dispute in a scientific way, I created a word document in Word 2010 (Windows 7) with a badly drawn graphics and exported it to HTML: > https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B654HhgdE0ZTRktjSERNS3pxd00... Note that the generated HTML5 source code - contains VML code - will not render correctly in any modern browser - If you want to be able to render it in IE11, you have to press F12 (Developer tools) and chan…

Thanks.

To clarify the generated code is invalid HTML 4.01 (20 errors according to W3C HTML4 validator https://validator.w3.org/check ) and the first view lines look like this:
Microsoft split Frontpage in two products SharePoint Designer and Expression Web (the later with a new web render engine), though both products are either a shadow of the former self (no WYSIWYG view anymore) or abandoned (free download without support): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Expression_Web

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#234

Post by michaelbunny »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #208

It was for quite similar reasons that Live Picture failed. We had a good product with fanatically devoted users; graphic artists persisted with LP on Mac OS 9 for years after Mac OS X came into common use. The problem was that former Apple and Pepsi CEO John Sculley was a major invester. Live Picture's image editing product, also called Live Picture - was regarded as a tool by Wall Street and as Sculley told us one d…

Decisions by companies listed at the stock exchange have to be seen from that perspective. Software business is an asset business. Software licences are not apples. For some strange reasons some analysts do believe that a certain kind of asset is more profitable - selling licences lead to a higher turnover. That's how software is seen from the investor's perspective.

Software is craftsmanship + plus 'copy' from the distribution perspective.

That's why open source really provides good results. Open source is free because there is no barter involved. There is no real declining marginal utility. Every technology that was in the position to grow a reputation busts exactly the moment the last user installed a copy ...

The marginal utility has to be introduced by design :). Then you get money ... because you have a price.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#235

Post by duaneb »

dempseye wrote: post #180
duaneb wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no doubt they would be even better in a good IDE. Do you really think the best programmers spend enough time refactoring for the use of an IDE to help?

Is refactoring a bad thing now?

Not at all, but assumably it doesn't take up most your time. It's just an easily solvable subset of coding operations.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#236

Post by duaneb »

dempseye wrote: post #207
riquito wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Do you really think the best programmers spend enough time refactoring for the use of an IDE to help? > Is refactoring a bad thing now? It isn't, he just intended that the best programmers refactor less (since they are the best they must get things right or better predict the future more often then the others).

Seems rather unlikely. Do they only have to work on code written by themselves or other great programmers?

"less". If most of your job is refactoring you should probably find a new job because you aren't getting any work done.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#237

Post by duaneb »

serge2k wrote: post #199
duaneb wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still a rename operation. I have difficulty understanding how this would require an IDE for anything but the more complex codebases, and even then, I would much prefer a discrete code server. Refactoring is still in its infancy. A), it's not entirely possible on C/C++ because of macros. B), they are serialized extremely poorly to diffs, so any boon from refactoring is sidestepped by SCM. C), most of the refac…

Using a tool to refactor is better for source control. The diff sucks, but it sucks because it actually found every instance and refactored properly, meaning going through to review it is simpler as long as you trust the tool. We should be using tools for this type of thing, for exactly the same rules as automated formatting should be the default response to any debate on formatting issues.

> Using a tool to refactor is better for source control

Yup, until merges/conflicts. :) Semantic diffs with refactoring operations would solve this.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#238

Post by duaneb »

douche wrote: post #201
duaneb wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still a rename operation. I have difficulty understanding how this would require an IDE for anything but the more complex codebases, and even then, I would much prefer a discrete code server. Refactoring is still in its infancy. A), it's not entirely possible on C/C++ because of macros. B), they are serialized extremely poorly to diffs, so any boon from refactoring is sidestepped by SCM. C), most of the refac…

It would seem that you've not used Resharper. Best refactoring tool I've ever seen. Actually seems like they are forcing the Visual Studio team to pick up their game. > (e.g. type signature changes are painful as hell) Resharper handles this very well.

It does not appear that Resharper works on any language or platform I use.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#239

Post by asveikau »

douche wrote: post #203
RogerL wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember in the 90s advocating for things like gcc and the absolute scorn I would receive. "A free compiler!!! What kind of crap must that be??". You paid for compilers, you paid for your version control, you paid for your bug tracker, and that was that. Interestingly, at that company (a defense contractor) it was the government more than anything that changed that attitude. There were a lot of projects initiated b…

If the VS debugger is king of the hill, then it must be really grim out there. At least half the time, I'm using printf debugging because actually running in the debugger brings my entire machine (16 GB RAM, quad-core intel) to a standstill.

Folks who have figured out windbg's learning curve will know that VS isn't even the best debugger from Microsoft.

Re: Why did Borland fail?

#240

Post by zapu »

kawsper wrote: post #196
Ecio78 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's strange, I remember myself buying an Italian dev magazine back at the end of the 90s that included a full copy of Delphi (ok, 16bit version) with application redist rights. I think I probably paid it the equivalent of 10euro.. One thing that I liked a lot about Delphi (compared to VB for example) that there were plenty of free (sometimes with sources too) VCL components that could be downloaded and used for yo…

I was also introduced to Delphi from a computer magazine in Denmark, they even used it as a theme in the next magazines where you would follow articles on how to code Delphi.

Same here - in Poland. We had Delphi on school computers, but obviously I couldn't "take it home". So it was really great (and surprising, too) to find it in a magazine.
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