Borland announces plans to give programming tools heave-ho
This was the big surprise in the computing/programming field for me this week. Borland announced they are bailing from the IDE business.
Borland has changed product lines significantly several times during its lifetime.
Last week, Borland announced their intention to add more software to their former products bone yard. The entire set of Borland IDEs - Delphi, C++ Builder, C# Builder, JBuilder, etc. They say they aren't discontinuing them - they intend to find another company to buy them off of them.
The announcement made quite a splash. I heard the news yesterday, while listening to the CNet podcast on my TiVo - via that Yahoo services feature for TiVo. Not sure if this is the right page, but there are a few podcasts listed on this CNet Podcast Central page.
I woke up predawn and was actually listening to the CNet podcast before I even got out of bed. After I heard that news, I few down the hall into my den to read the news on the web and go find Borland's press release. Sure enough, it was true.
I listened to Java Posse podcast episode #31 this morning while I was having breakfast. Great podcast episode and the series is pretty good in general.
I was a pretty avid consumer and user of Borland products in the 1980s on the Mac. In the 1990s, I bought their productivity and office tools on MS-DOS and then MS-Windows. Basically weaned myself off the last Borland product I still used - JBuilder - in 20003.
If they made that announcement three or more years ago, it would have been very traumatic for me. It would have thrown a kink in my programming.
As you can see from my timeline way up above, though - I have been through wave after wave of Borland selling me products and upgrades for them - and then suddenly dropping the product or selling it off to another company. In the latter case, the products were still dead anyway within a couple years.
Anyway, it was kind of like hearing from the folks that your childhood friends married and moved out of the area you grew up in - years after you got out of college and had gone off somewhere else to live. Yeah, you aren't going to see them anymore - but you weren't going to anyway. Still, being forced to recognize it and accept the implications they will not be in your future again is kind of sad.
Reading Borland's web site yesterday, I noticed they just shipped 2006 versions of their IDEs a couple months ago. People who bought those, which were not cheap, must really be worried. It sounds like Borland is still supporting those products, at least until they find a buyer to take them over.
Switching from one Java IDE to another, I can say from experience, is usually not that painful.
In contrast, switching C/C++ environments - and the implied change in compilers, can be a huge PITA. It shouldn't be, but C/C++ compiler writers and programmers live in this dreamworld where each pretends that they do not know what the other is doing. C/C++ does not define standard byte-order, scalar byte sizes, physical arrangement of bitfields, etc. You also have different MAKE utilities and different makefile syntaxes to deal with, different linkers, different symbol name hashing, etc.
Anyway, I am amused at how many times Microsoft-only programmers were using very behind the times Microsoft C++ compilers, and justifying it by saying that Borland was going to go out of business any quarter now. Well, they didn't. I used Borland's tools whenever I could, which was most of the time, from early 1991 through mid-2003.
When I finally let go of Borland, it was not because Borland died underneath me. It was because something better came along, and I switched to it. As much as I liked JBuilder, Eclipse ran much faster on large projects in 2003 that JBuilder did. Further, Eclipse quickly added fantastic refactoring and QA features.
When Vista comes out, Java programmers are probably going to have a lot easier time adopting it than C++ programmers. While Windows APIs will no doubt be changing, Java APIs will almost certainly not be disturbed. Those guys who stuck with programming Win32 API and C++ in the 1990s, when most IT development went to Java, are probably going to be busy next year changing things.
I think the lesson is, do not let an unreasoning fear or FUD make you deny yourself better tools, better productivity, better portability, easier support, and so forth. Whether the technology involved is an IDE, or a language - you need to make a rational decision.
That's what I did, and my horse did not get shot out from underneath me. By the time the horse got shot, it was not my horse any more - as far as JBuilder goes. With Java, which I think will still be supported for many years - I think Java will outlive Win32!
Borland has changed product lines significantly several times during its lifetime.
- They entered/exited Mac market (Turbo Pascal for Mac, Reflex database, etc.) in the 1980s.
- They entered/exited MS-DOS market (Sidekick, Paradox database, Quatro Pro, etc.) in early 1990s.
- They entered/exited MS-Windows productivity applications (Paradox for Windows, Quatro Pro for Windows) in late 1990s.
Last week, Borland announced their intention to add more software to their former products bone yard. The entire set of Borland IDEs - Delphi, C++ Builder, C# Builder, JBuilder, etc. They say they aren't discontinuing them - they intend to find another company to buy them off of them.
The announcement made quite a splash. I heard the news yesterday, while listening to the CNet podcast on my TiVo - via that Yahoo services feature for TiVo. Not sure if this is the right page, but there are a few podcasts listed on this CNet Podcast Central page.
I woke up predawn and was actually listening to the CNet podcast before I even got out of bed. After I heard that news, I few down the hall into my den to read the news on the web and go find Borland's press release. Sure enough, it was true.
I listened to Java Posse podcast episode #31 this morning while I was having breakfast. Great podcast episode and the series is pretty good in general.
I was a pretty avid consumer and user of Borland products in the 1980s on the Mac. In the 1990s, I bought their productivity and office tools on MS-DOS and then MS-Windows. Basically weaned myself off the last Borland product I still used - JBuilder - in 20003.
If they made that announcement three or more years ago, it would have been very traumatic for me. It would have thrown a kink in my programming.
As you can see from my timeline way up above, though - I have been through wave after wave of Borland selling me products and upgrades for them - and then suddenly dropping the product or selling it off to another company. In the latter case, the products were still dead anyway within a couple years.
Anyway, it was kind of like hearing from the folks that your childhood friends married and moved out of the area you grew up in - years after you got out of college and had gone off somewhere else to live. Yeah, you aren't going to see them anymore - but you weren't going to anyway. Still, being forced to recognize it and accept the implications they will not be in your future again is kind of sad.
Reading Borland's web site yesterday, I noticed they just shipped 2006 versions of their IDEs a couple months ago. People who bought those, which were not cheap, must really be worried. It sounds like Borland is still supporting those products, at least until they find a buyer to take them over.
Switching from one Java IDE to another, I can say from experience, is usually not that painful.
In contrast, switching C/C++ environments - and the implied change in compilers, can be a huge PITA. It shouldn't be, but C/C++ compiler writers and programmers live in this dreamworld where each pretends that they do not know what the other is doing. C/C++ does not define standard byte-order, scalar byte sizes, physical arrangement of bitfields, etc. You also have different MAKE utilities and different makefile syntaxes to deal with, different linkers, different symbol name hashing, etc.
Anyway, I am amused at how many times Microsoft-only programmers were using very behind the times Microsoft C++ compilers, and justifying it by saying that Borland was going to go out of business any quarter now. Well, they didn't. I used Borland's tools whenever I could, which was most of the time, from early 1991 through mid-2003.
When I finally let go of Borland, it was not because Borland died underneath me. It was because something better came along, and I switched to it. As much as I liked JBuilder, Eclipse ran much faster on large projects in 2003 that JBuilder did. Further, Eclipse quickly added fantastic refactoring and QA features.
When Vista comes out, Java programmers are probably going to have a lot easier time adopting it than C++ programmers. While Windows APIs will no doubt be changing, Java APIs will almost certainly not be disturbed. Those guys who stuck with programming Win32 API and C++ in the 1990s, when most IT development went to Java, are probably going to be busy next year changing things.
I think the lesson is, do not let an unreasoning fear or FUD make you deny yourself better tools, better productivity, better portability, easier support, and so forth. Whether the technology involved is an IDE, or a language - you need to make a rational decision.
That's what I did, and my horse did not get shot out from underneath me. By the time the horse got shot, it was not my horse any more - as far as JBuilder goes. With Java, which I think will still be supported for many years - I think Java will outlive Win32!
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posted by John Collins | 8:42 AM
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