Comment Feed for Borland and Delphi Officially Dead (Coffeehouse on Channel 9)

Re: Re: Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

Ray7 — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:15:38 GMT

Amen.

Re: Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

turrican — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:41:51 GMT

Yes indeed. I liked D7 a lot. Once in Windows, I coded only in Delphi since V1 to V7... even tried 2005. Done hundreds of programs in D7. After D7, things went downhill. Delphi might not be dead, but it's way too late now. I have now C#|.NET. I use Visual C# Express and I like it a lot.

I just hope C#/.NET won't go the way Delphi did.

Although, I'm sure for years to come developers will continue to use Delphi. A LOT of resources for it out there and a lot of 3rd party good components, from grids to buttons to you name it.

Delphi, you shall be missed.

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

FBK — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:04:23 GMT

I really enjoyed Turbo Pascal, and Delphi to some extent, I used Delphi 3, 5, 6 and 7 and to me Delphi 7 was quite good, but afterwards it just wasn't the same. When I started with C# I actually used Borland C# Builder for a few months, yes my first C# IDE came from Borland, and it wasn't bad at all, but you would have to start it and then go out for cofee while the IDE loaded, and then I installed Visual Studio 2003, and it loaded really fast, and it was really fast. Visual Studio actually didn't have all the features C# Builder had, but it was fast to load and fast to use, and it had the most important features.
Beginning with Delphi 2005 and RAD Studio the IDE became more convoluted, it had A LOT of features, really good features, but it would load 10x slower and the features were nice but not neccesary, while important things like the visual component design tools had some bugs, also it would use up all my RAM, which was quite large, and ask for more.
Delphi may not have beenas powerfull as C#, I was willing to look past that and still use it for Native Win32 development, but ultimately it was the IDE's inability to distinguish good features from great featuers at the cost of performance that was the show stopper for me.

Also ALM might be important, but again in the Borland ALM products (that I never used) I think that there's just to much complexity, and they neglected their IDE offerings. I think they violated one of the basic principles of software : KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)

I would imagine that there was a race to see how many things they could pack into the IDE's and how many different products they can churn out. Too bad, I actually feel sorry for them, they had good products, which I enjoyed using.

A word for the Delphi team, stop thinking of putting (more or less useless) features in, start thinking about taking features out, and make it simple and fast for developers to complete everyday tasks (like loading the IDE) like the Turbo Pascal of old did, and like Turbo Pascal pricing should be affordable. (Not that $900 isn't affordable, but it just isn't justified, when I can get VS 2008 Pro for less than $600)

Re: Re: Re: Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

androidi — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:27:25 GMT

I'd have loved to learn Delphi back in the day it weren't for the syntax. Logic is that if I don't like the syntax, other people won't like it either and it will die so why bother learning in the first place. In other news I don't like unreadable syntaxes or the keyword let. Since F# uses "let" but is otherwise alright I predict it won't die but won't be a huge success either unless they remove that keyword. LINQ has "let" but you don't have to use it so LINQ will prosper. Java was also a mixed bag, then C# came and fixed the issues I had with Java. C# is still mostly readable except for my code since I used to do some Perl, that is have the entire program on single line.

Re: Re: Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

Christian Liensberger — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:15:45 GMT

Delphi was OK, although I only started it to know when .NET was right around the corner...

Re: Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

JChung2006 — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:33:47 GMT

Sad to see Borland like it is. Turbo Pascal was one of the first programming languages I learned. I'm glad to hear Delphi's still alive and kicking.

Re: Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

Ray7 — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:22:54 GMT

Definitely a case of 'wait and see.'

Haven't really seen any evidence of anything changing.

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

Nick Hodges — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:21:42 GMT

Coming a bit late to this, but surely want to be clear:

Delphi is most decidely not dead. In fact, this purchase by Embarcadero is probably the most significantly positive event in the History of Delphi since it was released.

I'm biased -- I'm the Delphi Product Manager, but I can tell you with great assurance: Delphi is moving forward at a great pace. Delphi's roadmap is lively and varied. Our team is executing aggressively.

Delphi is as strong as ever.

Nick Hodges
Delphi Product Manager
CodeGear

Re: Re: Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

ExBorlander — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:11:26 GMT

Well as an ex Borland employee I think I am better qualified than most to comment on the current situation with the company. I was laid off at Xmas (nice timing Tod!) - however despite what you might think I'm not bitter or angry about it so my views are not tainted in any way - before someone jumps in. I was laid off because the company was not turning over enough money to justify paying me or many others. The only shame of it is that Tod and his cronies on the board all kept their jobs.

In my time with the company I worked in the sales organization (not a sales person though). Needless to say there were problems, but many of them were man made - or more specifically Tod-made! We had one re-focus after another which confused customers and staff alike. The company decided to concentrate on ALM rather than developer products - which in my mind was the right thing to do - since developer products have become commoditized. ALM was seen a huge money spinner. However the strategy was flawed. Primarily no one in the market place knew that Borland sold ALM products! I met numerous vendors at trade shows who told me they never came up against Borland. Borland was rarely included when vendors were invited to tender. When I argued that if I were an IT manager or CIO and I needed to solve a problem that involved software development I would use Google to search for vendors and solutions. I ran various searches on Google for each product group that Borland sells in the ALM space and found Borland on page 14, page 7, page 9 etc. Realistically, unless you know the company sells the products you need no one is going to go beyond page 2, let alone 14! Borland recently laid off most of the marketing structure worldwide. Not a great thing to do if people don't know you!

Buying Segue was a disastrous move for 2 reasons. Firstly, it killed the relationship with Mercury Interactive. By doing so, the large crumbs that used to come from them disappeared over night. Secondly, by buying Segue Borland completed it's ALM portfolio. However, had they not done so, the relationship with Mercury would not have been soured and it's very likely that Mercury (or HP) may have bought Borland to complement it's portfolio. Mercury has now expanded the Requirements section of it's Quality Center product - which indicates they need a Requirements solution which Borland would have filled. It is well known within Borland that Mercury was being courted for such a move.

Tod has, quite frankly, royally f**ked Borland over. He holds All Hands meetings where he tells staff that they shouldn't be worried about the stock price collapsing because the company's vision hasn't been realized yet! I've heard that the stock price has dropped because investors are offsetting gains for tax purposes, because the street hasn't seen the best of the company yet etc etc etc. Many of the said staff bought into the Employee Stock Purchase Plan at prices over $4 or $5. Some who have held for a few years bought at $15! Tod tells them that IF Borland turns a profit there's no reason the stock shouldn't be trading at $10+!!!!!!

When sales are looked at, targets have been reduced for ridiculously low levels and even then people rarely hit more than 40%! It's the only place I know where people forecast an amount below target and when they miss their forecast they are congratulated for coming close! The company sent people to Presidents Club who missed their quotas! Unreal!

The company's value drops daily and yet no one buys them out because they hold $200m debt, which has to be repaid immediately upon takeover. The company is only worth $91m - Segue was purchased for $100m! The whole CodeGear sell off is a debacle also. At the back end of last year the business attracted a low number of interested parties but there was no sale. I have it on very good authority that the sale fell through because certain individuals were unethical in their behavior and supplied incorrect information to one or more prospective purchasers. I'm amazed that Embarcadero bought it in the end but they did pay next to nothing for it!

So, I concur, Borland at least is Dead!

Re: Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

Ray7 — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:12:27 GMT

Thanks for dropping by ... :-)

Even though I decided to drop the Borland/Inprise/Borland/CodeGear toolset from my CV (I really don't have high hopes for you to be honest), I do occasionally get job offers from companies looking for Delphi people. It's not as dead as people think.

My biggest concern about the buyout is what Embarcadero are having to take with the toolset. I'm sure there are more than a few good people left on the development side, but are they also taking the genius who thought it was a good idea to try and sell a product for over $1000, when there were comparable tools on the market that were a fraction of the price or even free?

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

David Intersimone "David I" — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:24:56 GMT

Hi Everyone. sysrpl - let me clear up a few mistakes in your post about Delphi and CodeGear.

Delphi is not dead. Delphi is alive and well. When you went to the Borland site you missed the link to the developer tools. Better, go to http://www.codegear.com/ and you will see that all of our products are alive and well.

Borland did indeed announce the signing of a definitive agreement to sell the developer tools to an investment firm, Thoma Cressy Bravo (TCB) which also owns Embarcadero Technologies. When the deal closes (end of June), CodeGear will become part of Embarcadero creating the largest independent developer and database tools company, $100m+ in revenue, 500+ employees, global footprint, profitable, focused on multiple languages, multiple platforms, multiple databases. Focused on the design, development, management and optimization of code and data.

The deal is for $23m in case and approximately $7m in accounts receivable. But the price is irrelevant to the CodeGear + Embarcadero go forward strategies.

The Delphi roadmap is intact. And wait and see what we can do together once the deal is done.

Yes, some of our "alumni" have left over the years (people often leave companies including Microsoft, including some of the people you mention in your post). I love them all regardless of leaving or where they've gone. Paul is my diving buddy for life. Charlie is my twin brother separated at birth.

But we also continue to have great developers focused on Delphi for Win32 and for .NET. Other ex-Delphians still have warm and active places in their brains and hearts for Delphi and CodeGear products.

I have been here 23 years and will continue to be here. If anyone has any questions or fears about Delphi, you can contact us/me anytime. Vice President of Developer Relations and Chief Evangelist
CodeGear (from Borland and soon to be part of Embarcadero Technologies)

PS: Come on back, everyone, the waters fine here in Scotts Valley, California!

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

Bass — Fri, 09 May 2008 05:18:41 GMT

sysrpl wrote:

brian.shapiro wrote:My impression of Delphi was that it was used by people who thought they were too good for Visual Basic. Am I wrong?

Yes. Delphi was the brain child of Anders Hejlsberg, you know ... the guy who created C#.

It had/has many of the same concepts as C# especially as compared to VB6 and earlier. These concepts include real objects with static, instance and virtual methods, an object method type similar to delegates, properties with setters, getters and indexers, a kind of reflection called runtime type information, a class library similar to windows forms where a button is an object derived from custombuttoncontrol wincontrol control component persistent object.

You get the idea. Basically C# 1.0 without attributes. Also it compiles to a single native code exe, dll, or object files (which you could link to from C/C++). You can also write inline assembler and you don't need to distrubute to users any other files other than your exe.

Yes, Delphi is was several orders of magnitude better then then Visual Basic 6, just like C# is much better then it's disfigured offspring called "VB.NET".

MSDN needs to have some feature to hide VB.NET examples, because every time I have to go on the website to look up some functionality I get nauseous and want to puke after quickly scrolling past the VB.NET sections.

Long live C#.

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

sysrpl — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:27:01 GMT

brian.shapiro wrote:
My impression of Delphi was that it was used by people who thought they were too good for Visual Basic. Am I wrong?

Yes. Delphi was the brain child of Anders Hejlsberg, you know ... the guy who created C#.

It had/has many of the same concepts as C# especially as compared to VB6 and earlier. These concepts include real objects with static, instance and virtual methods, an object method type similar to delegates, properties with setters, getters and indexers, a kind of reflection called runtime type information, a class library similar to windows forms where a button is an object derived from custombuttoncontrol wincontrol control component persistent object.

You get the idea. Basically C# 1.0 without attributes. Also it compiles to a single native code exe, dll, or object files (which you could link to from C/C++). You can also write inline assembler and you don't need to distrubute to users any other files other than your exe.

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

brian.shapiro — Thu, 08 May 2008 23:49:15 GMT

My impression of Delphi was that it was used by people who thought they were too good for Visual Basic. Am I wrong?

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

evildictaitor — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:41:32 GMT

BlackTiger wrote:

Xaero_Vincent wrote:Delphi might be dead but Pascal isn't.

There is Free Pascal and many other Pascal interpreters and compilers.

But Delphi was a first professional visual IDE for Windows for me.

"Clarion" was a actually first first IDE, but that version was for DOS.

++

It colored words in blue! so much better to the console's BBC BASIC I had learnt prior to that.

Reminds me of the poster behind the robot-priest in futurama:

10 SIN
20 GOTO HELL

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

Alexei Pavlov — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:49:13 GMT

Xaero_Vincent wrote:
Delphi might be dead but Pascal isn't.

There is Free Pascal and many other Pascal interpreters and compilers.

But Delphi was a first professional visual IDE for Windows for me.

"Clarion" was a actually first first IDE, but that version was for DOS.

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

Alexei Pavlov — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:45:45 GMT

RIP [:C]

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

ScottWelker — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:40:51 GMT

grassBlade wrote:

ScottWelker wrote: 'Tis sad news

I cut my professional teeth on Turbo Pascal 3,

My first PC language: Turbo Pascal 1 (?) -- came with an awesome strategic space game.

He he... and I thought I was an old timer ;)

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

Xaero_Vincent — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:29:33 GMT

Delphi might be dead but Pascal isn't.

There is Free Pascal and many other Pascal interpreters and compilers.

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

grassBlade — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:58:53 GMT

ScottWelker wrote:
'Tis sad news

I cut my professional teeth on Turbo Pascal 3,

My first PC language: Turbo Pascal 1 (?) -- came with an awesome strategic space game.

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

AndyC — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:29:46 GMT

Delphi lost the plot after version 3 and Borland itself jumped the shark with that whole Inprise fiasco.

Shame, because once upon a time they really were the best developer tools you could get (OWL excluded, obviously).

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

Bas — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:05:56 GMT

sysrpl wrote:

Blake Stone

Is this just a coincidence or was he involved with Apogee in some way?

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

ScottWelker — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:04:06 GMT

'Tis sad news :(

I cut my professional teeth on Turbo Pascal 3, participated in the Paradox for Windows/OPAL and Delphi Betas. Delphi was awesome but sadly, the writing was on the wall even before Anders was picked off.

A moment of silence please... OK, now back to work! C#/.Net is as cool as Delphi ever was. Life goes on...

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

evildictaitor — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:53:39 GMT

That's a shame. Borland Pascal was one of the first sensibly powerful languages I ever learned.

Re: Borland and Delphi Officially Dead

Raghavendra_Mudugal — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:32:44 GMT

sysrpl wrote:

Raghavendra_Mudugal wrote:... but 'code gear' is section from borland which still deals and supports the delphi.

I dont get it... its just a name change, it states,
"Borland’s former Developer Tools Group is now CodeGear, a separate, new operation focused exclusively on maximizing developer productivity by advancing its popular, award-winning software development tools."

I think you missed this news item explaining it all.

Gotcha!
borland is now doing ALM...
no clue... whats all the idea behind it? selling..... delphi? we still use this tool for major development in our project. hmm.. let see what this new delphi will bring with it. Hope they don't change the product name :s the name delphi is cool.