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 continue in the IDE business like they did before. Apparently, JBuiler used to be their #1 cash cow. Well, until Eclipse came along: within 18 months, JBuilder license sales dropped to essentially zero. They eventually realized that the whole IDE market was dead, so that was spun off into CodeGear, JBuilder was relaunched as an Eclipse distribution with "premium" extensions, and CodeGear was ultimately sold to Embarcadero, while the rest of the company was trying to refocus on producing software for other parts of the development lifecycle, from requirements management to automated testing and test management (hence Segue) to SCM. Company performance was atrocious, and that really screwed over people that took part in the employee share program, but they somehow managed to make it over to get acquired by Micro Focus.
These days Torrent activities are extremely effective thanks to computers like Raspberry Pi and whenever an application appears which is useful but must be paid to be used, a reverse engineered and cracked version of it joins the Torrent network soon.
I think, business of software as a downloadable application is dead. See what Microsoft is doing.
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.
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 Linux start to kill old school commercial Unix (like Sun) around the same time. Probably the same trend.
I laughed at "...building the software analogs of sewer systems, utility poles, or synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats."
It derives from a Steven Wright Joke:
"All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats. The lady across the hall tried to rob a department store... with a pricing gun... She said, "Give me all of the money in the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store..."
They started out making Turbo Pascal a great product that anyone could afford, but it was so much cheaper than the "professional tools" everyone else was selling that businesses wouldn't take them seriously - there had to be a catch to the cheap price. So eventually Borland suddenly decided to at least triple the price starting with one of its versions, but it didn't work, they didn't gain ground against Microsoft and they lost the hobbyist developer.
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.
You sound like me. 15 years old and Turbo Pascal was a mind blowing experience for me. Especially in the graphics arena. UCSD physics department hired me to convert their particle collision vector data (Monte Carlo calculations) into a 3D graphics representation. That was a hell of an experience for me.
> 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 of Visual Studio .NET.
It was actually the web that introduced me to Borland's Windows IDEs. I'd used Turbo Pascal extensively, but then got hooked on Visual Studio once I migrated away from DOS. Then I started seeing talk of these Borland development environments for Windows and thought "I love TP, so why not give these a shot". I actually much preferred those IDE's to Visual Studio as well, but alas my career and personal interest was switching to non-Windows technologies at that point and thus I never really found a practical use for Borland's Windows compilers.
A few years back I did need to throw together a basic Windows app for some clients, but by that point Delphi was dead and I'd forgotten a lot of Pascal's nuances anyway. So I ended up knocking up something in VB.NET; which was actually less painful than I remembered from the .NET 1.0 days. In fact almost pleasurable. But for all of Pascal / Delphi's warts, I did very much prefer that language over any of the iterations of Visual Basic. In fact I think I'd probably go further and say I preferred it over C/C++ as well.
I have to say that Borland TurboPascal 3.0 (or earlier) was one of the finest pieces of software that I have ever seen. A full fledged Pascal compiler and a Wordstar compatible editor in a 29K binary. Where have those days gone?
In the height of the enterprise transformation, I asked Del Yokam, one of many interim CEOs after Kahn, "Are you saying you want to trade a million loyal $100 customers for a hundred $1 million customers?" Yokam replied without hesitation "Absolutely."
They stopped selling $49.95 compilers with IDEs and tried to be an enterprise company. People still buy IDEs and compilers. If they had kept doing what they were doing and improving their products, they would have been fine. Instead, they wanted the big money and it didn't happen.
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 good application in the ecosystem and bundling it.
But SV didn't learn the lesson and we are now in more abusive walled gardens for or mobile phones. And some young people parroting how wonderful Microsoft and Bill Gates are today.
> And some young people parroting how wonderful Microsoft and Bill Gates are today.
Compared to what Microsoft used to be like - recently Microsoft has made some pretty, surprising, awesome moves.
Specifically their open source movement (including .Net). You would never have seen that 10-20 years ago. I'm sure if you walked into Gates's office and said "I think we should open source this" - I have a feeling he would fire you on the spot.
They even now support Linux on their Azure platform - and that's not a it-will-run-but-you-are-on-your-own.
Now, I'm not saying Microsoft is a saint or that I would want to work for them. But considering they didn't take action against the mono or ReactOS projects makes them ok in my book (not that they would have any real legal case - but they could drag those projects through an expensive lawsuit which would just end up with a deal to cease development).
Some of Borland's problems had nothing to do with Microsoft. A good example is Borland taking 6 months to rewrite Quattro in object-oriented code. They did this in the middle of a heated battle with Microsoft Excel, where both companies were releasing major new features every 6 months. As awesome as OOP is, it is not a user-visible feature. Being MIA for 6 months while engineers OOP'd the code may have cost them the battle. You can read some of this in this story (search for 'object oriented'): http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/29/business/the-executive-com...
Some of Borland's problems were indeed Microsoft's doing. OWL vs. MFC, for example. OWL was the first object-oriented library for Windows, but MFC eventually won because MFC was always first to support Windows features. OWL lagged behind because Borland did not have access to in-development versions of Windows.
Borland applications such as Quattro Pro also suffered because Borland did not have access to in-development features of Windows such as OLE 2.0, and because of Microsoft bundling productivity applications into an Office "suite".
While some of this is Apple and Android, much of the root of this problem lies in the carriers themselves, not the software makers. Carriers have a long standing history of building very high and tight walled gardens around their networks, the devices on those networks, and even the versions of software that run on those devices. It has actually gotten a ton better since the App and Play Stores have come around. By building those walled garden stores the Apple and Android have pulled a lot of the burden for developers from individual carriers to single platforms. I would much rather have to work with a single walled garden such as the App Store than have to deal with coming up with a version of software for each carrier.
all tech companies do some shady stuff. look how apple sought to bury Adobe because Jobs felt slighted, manufacturers having to install nets to stop factory workers from committing suicide, evading hundreds of billions in paying taxes through Irish tax evasion. Stopping competitors from getting products to market through questionable patents and an army of lawyers. Uber making false calls mess with Lyft's operations. Google approaching Facebook to fix wages, bullying suppliers while suppliers took it for hopes of future business only to find Google built up their own works, and their sitting on Apple's board while secretly developing their own is questionable at best.
I would bet that the skeletons in the closets of these tech companies are far more darker then what we find out about. i guess the short point is, usually the same people who point(ed) at the evils of microsft praise other companies who have done far worse.
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
The Borland Turbo languages where the Cat's Pajamas.
Microsoft countered with the Quick languages.
Borland made Turbo Pascal for Windows and with Objects and then made Delphi.
Microsoft countered with Visual BASIC.
Borland made Borland C++ and JBuiilder.
Microsoft countered with Visual C++ and Visual J++/J# and then later Visual C#.
The free IDEs and Free compiler languages ate into Borland's sales. Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ, BlueJ, Sublime Text, GNU C/C++, Apple XCode, FreePascal/Lazarus, Ruby/Ruby on Rails, Python, Code::Blocks, etc.
In 2005 Microsoft introduce Visual Studio Express a free version of their development tools.
Like Amiga, Borland had the superior technology, but cheaper/free alternatives undercut their sales.
Mostly it was the free and open source revolution that did Borland in.
In the height of the enterprise transformation, I asked
Del Yokam, one of many interim CEOs after Kahn, "Are you
saying you want to trade a million loyal $100 customers
for a hundred $1 million customers?" Yokam replied
without hesitation "Absolutely."
Any day of the week! Why is this even in question?
I'm saying this from a personal experience running a B2B company for 7 years and switching to B2C model three years ago. I would never go back.
Sure, having a couple of big customers looks like a more stable option at first, but when big ones hit the ground, they hit hard.
The levels of stress are beyond compare.
Of course, there are drawbacks and some things are different. If you aim for large market, you have to invest in marketing/PR much more - but you are allowed to care less on the customer support front.
(I hope I won't be eating my words in a couple of years, but from current POV, it seems much better to have a huge base of small customers than a few big ones).
The myopic nature of the beast is really dumb. You want a blend of both. It's no different than managing a portfolio of assets, probably because it is identical to managing a portfolio of assets.
Because a language, and to a lesser extend an IDE, needs an ecosystem and that is based on number of users. This is even more true today - do you think it would be easier to find a book on C# or Ada? A programmer who can code in it? Getting your questions answered on Stack Overflow?
It depends on who you want to be and how you want to sell your product. At the absolute top where Google and Facebook is, there's no choice, there's just a billion customers.
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.
Embarcadero is still not getting it right. They know how to build great tech but are terrible marketers. Consider for example right now they sell a range of cross platform development tools. But there's no way to view a range of impressive showcase/example apps on each platform to see what can be done. So there's no strong motivation to use their tools.
People evaluating new development tools want to see and be impressed by what can be done with it. That sort of thing just isn't a priority for Embarcadero.
(My memory could be off; it was a long time ago, and I was young)
I believe that I first began learning to program in Turbo C or C++ and Turbo Pascal, far before I ever encountered Microsoft development tools, except maybe VB6, or other open source ones. I was young, in high school or earlier at the time, taking a summer school "computer camp" at a local college [1]. I remember learning Visual Delhi and C++Builder, and being amazed. I think Microsoft only had VB6 at the time. Visual Delphi and C++Builder were polished, and I was super excited to build applications with them, and I did.
Then VB began evolving, Microsoft released .NET. One Borland renamed themselves Inprise and seemed to disappear.(Inprise -> Enterprise?)
If Borland hand't build these consumer products, I might not have gotten into programming, or as early as I did. It helped me find my scientific/intellectual/professional love and, which led to a job at Amazon I continue to practice and are very happy with today.
Farewell, Borland! You did good. You helped inspire this student to learn computer science and begin his career.
[1] Scripps or Harvey Mudd -- somewhere in the Claremont Colleges, in Steele Hall.
I loved Turbo C. I learned C from it. The manuals were beautiful, lucid and generous. Borland C++ 3.1 was head & shoulders above Programmer's Workbench. Unfortunately it fell apart at 4.5.
Borland specialized in supplying tools that assisted in building windows-only desktop GUIs which would in turn access a database sitting somewhere on a LAN. As soon as the market moved to web GUIs, and hosting on linux, they were dead.
Pro tip: Add an ? to make the annoying quora "login" dialog disappear, www.quora.com/Diary/? even this will make it disappear, no need to add the ?share=1 thing :D
IMO it was the Internet. C and Pascal dominated till 1994, then Java books were everywhere. I loved TP5 (the manual was awesome) but dropped everything to learn Java which promised the world: write once, run everywhere and Internet applications! Woohoo. Then Perl and Javascript were on the scene. WIRED magazine! Very exciting times. Netscape Navigator Gold baby. Delphi was "Microsloth Windoze" not even on my radar.
[+] [-] _ak|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voidfunc|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ExpiredLink|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] T3RMINATED|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jtwebman|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aurora72|10 years ago|reply
I think, business of software as a downloadable application is dead. See what Microsoft is doing.
[+] [-] adrianlmm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asveikau|10 years ago|reply
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 Linux start to kill old school commercial Unix (like Sun) around the same time. Probably the same trend.
[+] [-] stared|10 years ago|reply
What happened to Borland Delphi? http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/83009/what-ha...
Why has C prevailed over Pascal? http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/114846/why-ha...
[+] [-] troymc|10 years ago|reply
It derives from a Steven Wright Joke:
"All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats. The lady across the hall tried to rob a department store... with a pricing gun... She said, "Give me all of the money in the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store..."
http://www.humournet.com/misc.humour/steven_wright.txt
[+] [-] sprior|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sigzero|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bbarn|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] FrankenPC|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laumars|10 years ago|reply
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 of Visual Studio .NET.
It was actually the web that introduced me to Borland's Windows IDEs. I'd used Turbo Pascal extensively, but then got hooked on Visual Studio once I migrated away from DOS. Then I started seeing talk of these Borland development environments for Windows and thought "I love TP, so why not give these a shot". I actually much preferred those IDE's to Visual Studio as well, but alas my career and personal interest was switching to non-Windows technologies at that point and thus I never really found a practical use for Borland's Windows compilers.
A few years back I did need to throw together a basic Windows app for some clients, but by that point Delphi was dead and I'd forgotten a lot of Pascal's nuances anyway. So I ended up knocking up something in VB.NET; which was actually less painful than I remembered from the .NET 1.0 days. In fact almost pleasurable. But for all of Pascal / Delphi's warts, I did very much prefer that language over any of the iterations of Visual Basic. In fact I think I'd probably go further and say I preferred it over C/C++ as well.
[+] [-] pjmlp|10 years ago|reply
Eventually I got around buying TPW 1.5 and Turbo C++ for Windows for personal use.
[+] [-] gjkood|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FrankenPC|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protomyth|10 years ago|reply
They stopped selling $49.95 compilers with IDEs and tried to be an enterprise company. People still buy IDEs and compilers. If they had kept doing what they were doing and improving their products, they would have been fine. Instead, they wanted the big money and it didn't happen.
[+] [-] bluedino|10 years ago|reply
It's weird thinking we used to pay for compilers
[+] [-] alecco|10 years ago|reply
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 good application in the ecosystem and bundling it.
But SV didn't learn the lesson and we are now in more abusive walled gardens for or mobile phones. And some young people parroting how wonderful Microsoft and Bill Gates are today.
[+] [-] frozenport|10 years ago|reply
[2] http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/11942/2702
[1] http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/2/15/71552/7795
[+] [-] nadams|10 years ago|reply
Compared to what Microsoft used to be like - recently Microsoft has made some pretty, surprising, awesome moves.
Specifically their open source movement (including .Net). You would never have seen that 10-20 years ago. I'm sure if you walked into Gates's office and said "I think we should open source this" - I have a feeling he would fire you on the spot.
They even now support Linux on their Azure platform - and that's not a it-will-run-but-you-are-on-your-own.
Now, I'm not saying Microsoft is a saint or that I would want to work for them. But considering they didn't take action against the mono or ReactOS projects makes them ok in my book (not that they would have any real legal case - but they could drag those projects through an expensive lawsuit which would just end up with a deal to cease development).
[+] [-] petilon|10 years ago|reply
Some of Borland's problems were indeed Microsoft's doing. OWL vs. MFC, for example. OWL was the first object-oriented library for Windows, but MFC eventually won because MFC was always first to support Windows features. OWL lagged behind because Borland did not have access to in-development versions of Windows.
Borland applications such as Quattro Pro also suffered because Borland did not have access to in-development features of Windows such as OLE 2.0, and because of Microsoft bundling productivity applications into an Office "suite".
[+] [-] jeffmould|10 years ago|reply
While some of this is Apple and Android, much of the root of this problem lies in the carriers themselves, not the software makers. Carriers have a long standing history of building very high and tight walled gardens around their networks, the devices on those networks, and even the versions of software that run on those devices. It has actually gotten a ton better since the App and Play Stores have come around. By building those walled garden stores the Apple and Android have pulled a lot of the burden for developers from individual carriers to single platforms. I would much rather have to work with a single walled garden such as the App Store than have to deal with coming up with a version of software for each carrier.
[+] [-] autokad|10 years ago|reply
I would bet that the skeletons in the closets of these tech companies are far more darker then what we find out about. i guess the short point is, usually the same people who point(ed) at the evils of microsft praise other companies who have done far worse.
[+] [-] PhantomGremlin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sigzero|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dlitz|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|10 years ago|reply
"In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters" http://www.amazon.com/Search-Stupidity-High-Tech-Marketing-D...
I'd highly recommend it. Technology changes, but people don't.
[+] [-] orionblastar|10 years ago|reply
Microsoft countered with the Quick languages.
Borland made Turbo Pascal for Windows and with Objects and then made Delphi.
Microsoft countered with Visual BASIC.
Borland made Borland C++ and JBuiilder.
Microsoft countered with Visual C++ and Visual J++/J# and then later Visual C#.
The free IDEs and Free compiler languages ate into Borland's sales. Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ, BlueJ, Sublime Text, GNU C/C++, Apple XCode, FreePascal/Lazarus, Ruby/Ruby on Rails, Python, Code::Blocks, etc.
In 2005 Microsoft introduce Visual Studio Express a free version of their development tools.
Like Amiga, Borland had the superior technology, but cheaper/free alternatives undercut their sales.
Mostly it was the free and open source revolution that did Borland in.
[+] [-] CamperBob2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] babuskov|10 years ago|reply
I'm saying this from a personal experience running a B2B company for 7 years and switching to B2C model three years ago. I would never go back.
Sure, having a couple of big customers looks like a more stable option at first, but when big ones hit the ground, they hit hard.
The levels of stress are beyond compare.
Of course, there are drawbacks and some things are different. If you aim for large market, you have to invest in marketing/PR much more - but you are allowed to care less on the customer support front.
(I hope I won't be eating my words in a couple of years, but from current POV, it seems much better to have a huge base of small customers than a few big ones).
[+] [-] rytis|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icelancer|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomjen3|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xorcist|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walterbell|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] revanx_|10 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] andrewstuart|10 years ago|reply
People evaluating new development tools want to see and be impressed by what can be done with it. That sort of thing just isn't a priority for Embarcadero.
[+] [-] jcrites|10 years ago|reply
I believe that I first began learning to program in Turbo C or C++ and Turbo Pascal, far before I ever encountered Microsoft development tools, except maybe VB6, or other open source ones. I was young, in high school or earlier at the time, taking a summer school "computer camp" at a local college [1]. I remember learning Visual Delhi and C++Builder, and being amazed. I think Microsoft only had VB6 at the time. Visual Delphi and C++Builder were polished, and I was super excited to build applications with them, and I did.
Then VB began evolving, Microsoft released .NET. One Borland renamed themselves Inprise and seemed to disappear.(Inprise -> Enterprise?)
If Borland hand't build these consumer products, I might not have gotten into programming, or as early as I did. It helped me find my scientific/intellectual/professional love and, which led to a job at Amazon I continue to practice and are very happy with today.
Farewell, Borland! You did good. You helped inspire this student to learn computer science and begin his career.
[1] Scripps or Harvey Mudd -- somewhere in the Claremont Colleges, in Steele Hall.
[+] [-] GnarfGnarf|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gizi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thewhitetulip|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjbrunet|10 years ago|reply