Has Borland's Reputation Gone So Far Down the Tubes?

**WILL** · 10-08-2006, 07:51 AM

You know it seems to me that the more and more I talk about Borland outside of PGD, the more misinformation and unresearched bias is placed on and around this company.

Personally, I think part of it is their own damn fault. Nevermind all their renaming addiction and mismanagement issues, but just focusing on their lack of strength as a company. They really haven't made too many good vibes in the market have they?

This is not to knock the Delphi and other compiler suite development teams or the new DevCo people at all. Oh no, it's not about them really. It's pretty much about all the damage and the mess that the comapny Borland it's self (aka the screw-up company that couldn't) created in their wake.

Yes, they were once great in their past. And yes Delphi was a great invention. Up until maybe version 3. Then something happened. Something mysterious and dark. Borland changed. They became this hidious, ugly creature that didn't really know what it was doing.

Kinda like the Nortel curse where they screw up everything that they buy. [size=9px](Actually there are a few companies that can hold this title too.

)[/size]

Now maybe only the Borland employees of the time have a true and complete story of what went wrong but in my own very un-humble oppinion, it really stunk of upper management involvement. And one day... perhaps well after the new DevCo settles in and starts fixing things, I hope to hear the story unabridged. Because simply we are well past linch mobs now. We are more in the territory of changing the minds of the entire population of the software development market.

It's kind of scarry really. It's almost as if reality went out the window and everyones is infected with some kind of strange virus. You mention Delphi, Pascal or Borland and you get the most complex and fantastic stories ever. And they all date no later than 1995.

Yup, the old Borland really dropped the ball allright. And now the rest of us have to pickup the peices --DevCo included.

**tanffn** · 10-08-2006, 10:57 AM

I know its not a petition.. but even so, I agree

As I wrote (somewhere) before every time I mention my preferred/default programming language is Delphi I can see their eyebrow lift which usually involves an aggressive pro-delphi-explanation campaign (usally in vain, but I try).

The few programmers that do program in Delphi (among other things) praise it! Its nice to see the contrast.. :?

**jdarling** · 10-08-2006, 12:50 PM

As I've said time and time again: Borlands largest mistake was in its marketing. Lets face it, for the longest time they had the BEST compiler and compiler tools on the market. Instead of getting a good agency behind them and pushing their compilers, they chose to let word of mouth spread it. At the same time MS and Intel were out beating the bushes and giving away free copies of their compilers to anyone that wanted to show up.

Who showed up, the upper management, decesion makers, key stakeholders, hobbiest, and many others. Thus MS takes the lead. Visual Basic (a poor design and implementation at the time, and still not completely up to par) takes over because its in all of the schools (ah yes another good placement for low cost long term investment). It shows up all over. Yet, Borland still does not push nor advertise their compilers.

You can see the same result on the rest of their products as well. StarTeam was one of the best code management tools with a great integration scheme. Before anyone else was really doing it. Borland buys them and poof they go bye-bye from the ad world.

Upper management, yeah they are a problem as well. Lets only hope that Dev-Co listens and learns from its parent's mistakes. Lets hope that they find the way back into the Key Stakeholders pockets, and lets hope that they can actually keep up with the market trends.

As for other borland products, I've never liked Borland. I like Delphi (only because its the best pascal IDE on the market), but soon FPC is going to reach its level. Chrome is already LIGHTYEARS AHEAD of Delphi for .NET, and they push it.

Then again, what do I know...

**tanffn** · 10-08-2006, 02:22 PM

Actually Jeremy, they teach Turbo Pascal in high schools (at least when I was a student) and they also teach it in the university as one of the first introductory classes.

The problem is that all the advanced classes are not in Pascal/Delphi its in c++ , Java (yack!) or even something worse.
All the eyebrow people I talked with also started with the assumption it‚Äôs a programming language for nobs, with no poor. All of them said something in the area of ‚Äúits like VB‚Äù (before VB.Net, which is.. more usable)

**Robert Kosek** · 10-08-2006, 02:45 PM

Chrome won't ever get my money for two reasons: A) It requires Visual Studio, and I don't have the money to waste on it. B) It uses .NET, which I loathe.

Otherwise it might very well be a very good compiler. D2005PE isn't too bad a compiler, but at least I can sell my stuff.

Borland lost credibility with some of the smaller aspects of Object Pascal, optomizations for speed, space and memory usage would have helped the reputation. As Sly helped us understand better, C++ is used more for its speed and memory usage, able to simply set a whole array to 0 while we must walk through with a for-loop.

I think the DevCo needs to address things such as the memory usage of Objects, memory management, and a few other things that Pascal is 'behind' in. I think we all need to be concerned for awhile about the efficiency of Delphi, rather then its power. Delphi is still the greatest RAD tool, but isn't all that efficient. I would like the DevCo to fine tune the machine a bit.

Borland is a laughingstock because of their blatant attempts to MS-ize. They have tried with past versions of Delphi, now Borland Developer Studio, to do things we (the users) didn't care about. Why pull C#, C++ and .NET all into one IDE? You waste my money!

If you want to know more of why Borland and Pascal suffer in reputation, I know a few guys who beat on it relentlessly. Maybe they'll have a reason.

**jdarling** · 10-08-2006, 04:04 PM

@Robert - Chrome does not have to use Visual Studio, it has its own IDE that can be used with it. I agree with your feelings on .NET though, as I don't like managed code

@taffn - They used to teach Pascal in schools, now they teach Java and .NET. Check your 100 and 101 courses list at your local school

.

True, MS never targeted High Schools, but they did target higher education establishments. The average student was pushed to take C/C++ over Pascal, with the Pascal courses typically also teaching Basic. Of course, it all depends on the year you last attended school and what school it was.

**Setharian** · 10-08-2006, 04:13 PM

I think the DevCo needs to address things such as the memory usage of Objects, memory management, and a few other things that Pascal is 'behind' in. I think we all need to be concerned for awhile about the efficiency of Delphi, rather then its power

I think you're wrong here....memory managment is great mainly thanks to Pierre le Riche's FastMM which is now the default memory manager...memory usage is the smallest possible (4-byte alligned, packed would slow down execution time)...each object takes 4 + field_count*4 bytes (if there's a static array then of course it's different)....I've built some console Delphi apps using just SysUtils and System units and the application was sometimes faster than a C++ equivalent....keep in mind that Delphi compiler is the best in the world....the only thing, where memory usage and efficiency is a concern is the IDE itself....

able to simply set a whole array to 0 while we must walk through with a for-loop

FillChar(SomeArray[0], Length(SomeArray) * SizeOf(SomeArrayElementType), 0);

**Robert Kosek** · 10-08-2006, 04:25 PM

I didn't know the statistics of the new FastMM, but that is very good to know. And I was partially aware of the FillChar function, but not in that style of use.

Anyhow (in that case), then I think they should work on a cost effective version for students who want to make a little money... not the way their current license is. :x

**Setharian** · 10-08-2006, 04:47 PM

Originally Posted by Robert Kosek

Anyhow (in that case), then I think they should work on a cost effective version for students who want to make a little money... not the way their current license is. :x

this is true, but at least this new Turbo brand Express version is gonna be for free

**WILL** · 10-08-2006, 08:11 PM

For those that are currious this is the news item(on GameDev.net) that sparked this topic; Borland returns to its roots

Funny thing is that the gentleman that has spread some of this false information I speak of seems to be convinced of a few of the several myths that plague the Pascal and Borland markets.