So far my testing has it as a dramatic improvement over D2k5. Of course, from my point of view, it is more of a bug fix than something of a full version. I've been through the 'what's new' list and I'm underwhelmed.
Ok, ok, it has a C++ compiler built in, but I'm a Delphi fan and could care less about the C++ compiler (or MS's C# compiler or the vauge hints of MS's VB compiler lurking about either).
So for the C++ world, if you haven't long since moved on to VS, it might be a spanking new toy, but frankly, if you could turn it off, it wouldn't really rank as more than a bug patch (advanced records harken back to TP 5.5's objects so technically represent more exposing old code in a new way than a true new feature like operator overloading)
Still, that said, still a dramatic improvement in speed, and the automatic reporting of bugs when an exception occurs is a nice touch (I use madshi's tool in my code, so its nice to see borland catch up there)
Not looking forward to moving my Jedi VCL stuff, it doesn't look like they've caught up yet. Unfortunately, I'll need to get it working in D2K6 to fully test the apps I develop in it. Still, D2K5 was unbearable just to work with packages, so far D2k6 has been fast enough to make it livable again.
Now if only someone would FINALLY add in an "install all design time packages" to the project group options... ugh that is tedious.
If you have't downloaded it yet, definitely give it a look.
Throughout the late 80's and throughout the nineties I was a large reseller of Borland products. I was amazed at the loyalty of the user group. Products like Turbo C and Turbo Pascal were always huge sellers for me. Can anyone tell me what has happened to Borland? Is the programming talent from those years gone? I am a suffering investor who wants to believe in a company which made me a lot of money as a reseller, however, it appears to be a company which is struggling to find its way. Is it a executive management issue or programming talent issue?
Well, I am done my eval, and I was satified with everything but one thing. The price point. After getting burnt on D2K5, the price for D2K6 is just too damn high.
I don't want C++Builder and frankly, have no interest in subsidizing a language no-one wants (hey, if there was real interest, it wouldn't have died already).
Sadly, this should be a service patch for D2K5 (except for the C++Builder, which should be another sku or more should have been offered like .net 2.0 support). Heck, in my MSDN subscription, they are still writing service packs for VB 6 and even though VS2005 is out, a patch for VS2003 is due out soon. In Delphi world, you have to BUY your patches as "full version upgrades".
Greg -> there is your answer, bad versions and high prices, no long term support. Kinda drives people away.
I guess I'll wait for the NEXT version to evaluate to see if it makes financial sense by then, or maybe the NewCo will see the light and go back to older pricing schemes.
Incidently, about the "cash cow" myth. Do the numbers. Assume that the average cost is 1000$ a unit, if you sell 50,000 units a year, that is 50 million dollars a year, before expenses. Higher average sale price or more sales mean even more money. D2 cost me 500$ and came with a COMPLETE set of manuals. D2k5 cost me 1600$ and came with less paper than your average sunday times newspaper. D2 was an evolutionary rewrite of the product with serious R&D costs, D2K5 was a minor rev of the previous version that didn't work right.
Kinda hard to see why you WOULDN'T call it a cashcow. The return on investment is well beyond what you would expect on just about anything else you could market.
i need it7tyuuiyuiy byuyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
I downloaded the BDS 2006 trial, but the key Borland sent me does not work to unlock it. Don't have the time right now to go through the *long* install procedure again or bother to contact them for another license key. (You HAVE to install all the MS .NET silliness, even if you just want use it for Win32 targets. The install won't run without them). Maybe one day I will attempt to try it again.
As to Mr. Boudreau's question of where the Borland developer support went; IMHO it was self inflicted by Borland, with a little blame due to MS's competitive strategies. Back in the DOS and up to the Window 3.1 days, Borland had the best PC development tools hands down. Nobody I knew those years used MS development products. Most of us cut our teeth with Turbo Pascal and when the market turned to C/C++, Borland was there with a superior tool again. The Micosoft C compilers were a joke compared to the Borland stuff availible up until about 1994. Even TASM was better than MASM. It must have been a major embarasment that Borland had a much better Windows programming product with Turbo C++ and the OWL library. So MS got mad and did something about it.
Then MS figured this was a big problem, got their act together and had better developer products ready when Win95 was delivered. They also hired away lots of Borland talent. Quality of the Borland C++ product started to suffer. Some I'm sure could be blamed on MS's notorious 'undocumented' features in Win95, especially the API calls. (I don't know about the Delphi quality here since I haven't used the Pascal-style products since 1990). Like it or not, even to this day, C++ rules the Win32 development world. MS took the C++ developers back (even with the MFC kludge) and has kept them ever since.
Borland also miffed a lot of C++ developers when they dropped OWL and forced everyone to use VCL after Borland C++ 5.0. MFC was an abomination, and everyone knew OWL was better, but for some reason Borland forced everyone to switch and use the Delphi-based VCL. C people like C, and want to program everything in C, like it or not. Forcing the object framework to be Pascal-based with C++ on top made C++ Builder a polygot and not what most C++ developers wanted.
Nowadays for serious Win32 development (not necessarily RAD-style), you have to know and be proficient MS Visual Studio. 7-10 years ago, hardware vendors of interface cards and the like dared not release a product without both Borland and MS C++ support. Now, nobody gives you Boarland C++ support. As a matter of fact, they call you crazy for wanting to use Borland now. I blame some of this on the C++ move to the Builder/VCL architecture that forced all that investment in the OWL framework to become unsupported overnight. Caused may Borlanders to flee to the dark side.
I am excited that BDS 2006 has all three products in one C++, Delphi, and C#. Even more exciting is that the VCL components can now be coded C++ or Delphi. I also really like Delphi and would be very inclined to use it since it is included in the new product. Hopefully this new BDS release will win over converts as well as keep the faithful.
I'll let you know if I like it and if my old C++ Builder 6 projects will convert easily....if I can just get the trial to unlock!
Please keep your comments related to the post on which you are commenting. No spam, personal attacks, or general nastiness. I will be watching and will delete comments I find irrelevant, offensive and unnecessary.
So far my testing has it as a dramatic improvement over D2k5. Of course, from my point of view, it is more of a bug fix than something of a full version. I've been through the 'what's new' list and I'm underwhelmed.
ReplyDeleteOk, ok, it has a C++ compiler built in, but I'm a Delphi fan and could care less about the C++ compiler (or MS's C# compiler or the vauge hints of MS's VB compiler lurking about either).
So for the C++ world, if you haven't long since moved on to VS, it might be a spanking new toy, but frankly, if you could turn it off, it wouldn't really rank as more than a bug patch (advanced records harken back to TP 5.5's objects so technically represent more exposing old code in a new way than a true new feature like operator overloading)
Still, that said, still a dramatic improvement in speed, and the automatic reporting of bugs when an exception occurs is a nice touch (I use madshi's tool in my code, so its nice to see borland catch up there)
Not looking forward to moving my Jedi VCL stuff, it doesn't look like they've caught up yet. Unfortunately, I'll need to get it working in D2K6 to fully test the apps I develop in it. Still, D2K5 was unbearable just to work with packages, so far D2k6 has been fast enough to make it livable again.
Now if only someone would FINALLY add in an "install all design time packages" to the project group options... ugh that is tedious.
If you have't downloaded it yet, definitely give it a look.
looking to stay ahead of the curve
ReplyDeletelooking to stay ahead of the curve
ReplyDeleteThroughout the late 80's and throughout the nineties I was a large reseller of Borland products. I was amazed at the loyalty of the user group. Products like Turbo C and Turbo Pascal were always huge sellers for me. Can anyone tell me what has happened to Borland? Is the programming talent from those years gone? I am a suffering investor who wants to believe in a company which made me a lot of money as a reseller, however, it appears to be a company which is struggling to find its way. Is it a executive management issue or programming talent issue?
ReplyDeleteWell, I am done my eval, and I was satified with everything but one thing. The price point. After getting burnt on D2K5, the price for D2K6 is just too damn high.
ReplyDeleteI don't want C++Builder and frankly, have no interest in subsidizing a language no-one wants (hey, if there was real interest, it wouldn't have died already).
Sadly, this should be a service patch for D2K5 (except for the C++Builder, which should be another sku or more should have been offered like .net 2.0 support). Heck, in my MSDN subscription, they are still writing service packs for VB 6 and even though VS2005 is out, a patch for VS2003 is due out soon. In Delphi world, you have to BUY your patches as "full version upgrades".
Greg -> there is your answer, bad versions and high prices, no long term support. Kinda drives people away.
I guess I'll wait for the NEXT version to evaluate to see if it makes financial sense by then, or maybe the NewCo will see the light and go back to older pricing schemes.
Incidently, about the "cash cow" myth. Do the numbers. Assume that the average cost is 1000$ a unit, if you sell 50,000 units a year, that is 50 million dollars a year, before expenses. Higher average sale price or more sales mean even more money. D2 cost me 500$ and came with a COMPLETE set of manuals. D2k5 cost me 1600$ and came with less paper than your average sunday times newspaper. D2 was an evolutionary rewrite of the product with serious R&D costs, D2K5 was a minor rev of the previous version that didn't work right.
Kinda hard to see why you WOULDN'T call it a cashcow. The return on investment is well beyond what you would expect on just about anything else you could market.
i need it
ReplyDeleteI need it
ReplyDeletei need it7tyuuiyuiy byuyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
ReplyDeleteI downloaded the BDS 2006 trial, but the key Borland sent me does not work to unlock it. Don't have the time right now to go through the *long* install procedure again or bother to contact them for another license key. (You HAVE to install all the MS .NET silliness, even if you just want use it for Win32 targets. The install won't run without them). Maybe one day I will attempt to try it again.
ReplyDeleteAs to Mr. Boudreau's question of where the Borland developer support went; IMHO it was self inflicted by Borland, with a little blame due to MS's competitive strategies. Back in the DOS and up to the Window 3.1 days, Borland had the best PC development tools hands down. Nobody I knew those years used MS development products. Most of us cut our teeth with Turbo Pascal and when the market turned to C/C++, Borland was there with a superior tool again. The Micosoft C compilers were a joke compared to the Borland stuff availible up until about 1994. Even TASM was better than MASM. It must have been a major embarasment that Borland had a much better Windows programming product with Turbo C++ and the OWL library. So MS got mad and did something about it.
Then MS figured this was a big problem, got their act together and had better developer products ready when Win95 was delivered. They also hired away lots of Borland talent. Quality of the Borland C++ product started to suffer. Some I'm sure could be blamed on MS's notorious 'undocumented' features in Win95, especially the API calls. (I don't know about the Delphi quality here since I haven't used the Pascal-style products since 1990). Like it or not, even to this day, C++ rules the Win32 development world. MS took the C++ developers back (even with the MFC kludge) and has kept them ever since.
Borland also miffed a lot of C++ developers when they dropped OWL and forced everyone to use VCL after Borland C++ 5.0. MFC was an abomination, and everyone knew OWL was better, but for some reason Borland forced everyone to switch and use the Delphi-based VCL. C people like C, and want to program everything in C, like it or not. Forcing the object framework to be Pascal-based with C++ on top made C++ Builder a polygot and not what most C++ developers wanted.
Nowadays for serious Win32 development (not necessarily RAD-style), you have to know and be proficient MS Visual Studio. 7-10 years ago, hardware vendors of interface cards and the like dared not release a product without both Borland and MS C++ support. Now, nobody gives you Boarland C++ support. As a matter of fact, they call you crazy for wanting to use Borland now. I blame some of this on the C++ move to the Builder/VCL architecture that forced all that investment in the OWL framework to become unsupported overnight. Caused may Borlanders to flee to the dark side.
I am excited that BDS 2006 has all three products in one C++, Delphi, and C#. Even more exciting is that the VCL components can now be coded C++ or Delphi. I also really like Delphi and would be very inclined to use it since it is included in the new product. Hopefully this new BDS release will win over converts as well as keep the faithful.
I'll let you know if I like it and if my old C++ Builder 6 projects will convert easily....if I can just get the trial to unlock!
busco trial de Delphi
ReplyDeleteI like delphi,because it is powful to use it making procedur.But it is very expensive.
ReplyDelete