Why don't companies like Borland see the obvious? [modified]
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Companies like Borland mystify me; their failures are so blindingly obvious I wonder if the entire company leadership is living in an alternate reality. Beyond all the other misguided marketing of the Turbo brand, Turbo C# supports, get this, .NET 1.1. You.Have.Got.To.Be.Kidding.Me. And the company wonders why they're losing money. -- modified at 19:04 Tuesday 5th September, 2006 [PS. I tried the Turbo C++ download. It's a major dissapointment. At the very least I expected practical project management and intellisense and auto formatting that work (auto formatting half worked; intellisense failed miserably on my narrow, simple test project--that's pathetic.) It's like Borland has never rid themselves of the morons who vomited Quattro Pro on us.]
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Companies like Borland mystify me; their failures are so blindingly obvious I wonder if the entire company leadership is living in an alternate reality. Beyond all the other misguided marketing of the Turbo brand, Turbo C# supports, get this, .NET 1.1. You.Have.Got.To.Be.Kidding.Me. And the company wonders why they're losing money. -- modified at 19:04 Tuesday 5th September, 2006 [PS. I tried the Turbo C++ download. It's a major dissapointment. At the very least I expected practical project management and intellisense and auto formatting that work (auto formatting half worked; intellisense failed miserably on my narrow, simple test project--that's pathetic.) It's like Borland has never rid themselves of the morons who vomited Quattro Pro on us.]
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
But Turbo C supported...C, and Turbo C++ supported C++. So why not have a compiler and IDE that supports C#? OK, so a 2.0 version would make more sense but I personally want more than just Microsoft making .NET targeting IDEs. The more competition, the more pressure to produce stable, feature rich, productivity enhancing IDEs the better.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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But Turbo C supported...C, and Turbo C++ supported C++. So why not have a compiler and IDE that supports C#? OK, so a 2.0 version would make more sense but I personally want more than just Microsoft making .NET targeting IDEs. The more competition, the more pressure to produce stable, feature rich, productivity enhancing IDEs the better.
cheers, Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
Chris Maunder wrote:
OK, so a 2.0 version would make more sense
That's the point. Anyone who uses .NET 1.1 on a new project needs their head examined. And who is going to suddenly drop Visual Studio 2003 to switch to Turbo C# mid-project? Maybe they got pissed off at Microsoft. Fine, but does Turbo C# even migrate your Visual Studio Projects? When a smart company introduces a competitor to a well established market niche, they introduce a mature product with a clear differentiator. They don't introduce a has been the moment it hits the streets. In this case, the smart move would have been to target developers who haven't yet committed to Visual Studio 2005 or who have been testing it and are very frustrated with the bugs. That means you need to do everything C# that VS 2005 does but better. (I don't think you need to support C++/CLI. A big reason to support the latter is for P/Invoke, so one differentiator is to provide both assemblies and source snippets covering most the uncovered Win32 APIs.) Borland needed to create a developer experience such that developers are hesitant to move back. Microsoft did this for me with VS 2005 vs. VS 2003 vs. VS 6.0 (yes, 2005 frustrates me, but the overall experience still keeps me from going back.) Turbo C/C++ for DOS did that in spades. Turbo C++ not only doesn't, it makes Visual Studio 2005 look like the best software ever written. Perhaps Turbo C# does this, but I'll never know because I haven't used .NET 1.1 in 18 months and have no intention to go back now. Most potential buyers will ignore it for the same reason. This ranks extremely high on both the stupidity and cluelessness scale. I've seen it before. Worse, Borland has done it before--it's called Quattro Pro (they had a plethora of dumb products around then, though few people remember them.) Almost forgot; they also overpaid for Ashton-Tate. PS. If the goal is to keep Microsoft honest, supporting an obsolete product isn't going to do that. Seriously, what's next? A new Turbo C++ that supports only 16-bit Windows? Or maybe they should buy GEM to threaten Windows.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Companies like Borland mystify me; their failures are so blindingly obvious I wonder if the entire company leadership is living in an alternate reality. Beyond all the other misguided marketing of the Turbo brand, Turbo C# supports, get this, .NET 1.1. You.Have.Got.To.Be.Kidding.Me. And the company wonders why they're losing money. -- modified at 19:04 Tuesday 5th September, 2006 [PS. I tried the Turbo C++ download. It's a major dissapointment. At the very least I expected practical project management and intellisense and auto formatting that work (auto formatting half worked; intellisense failed miserably on my narrow, simple test project--that's pathetic.) It's like Borland has never rid themselves of the morons who vomited Quattro Pro on us.]
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Actually, it's quite simple really. Many companies suffer from the "wait and see" mentality. They wait on a new technology to start developing on it until it's "proven", but what this means is that by the time they get a product out the door it's almost (or is) obsolete. Let's use a few examples. WordPerfect waited for a "Windows" version of WordPerfect until after Word had completely decimated their chances of getting a foot hold. They wanted to see if this "windows" fad took off. The same thing happened with 32 bit applications for Windows 95. Borland took a number of years before they started work on their .NET version of Delphi and C# at all. Basically, they needed to see their market share start to dwindle, or conversely see their competitors market share start to rise before they would take action, and by then it was simply too late. Technology is no place for wimps. Bet the farm early because if you don't you won't have one to bet.
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
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Companies like Borland mystify me; their failures are so blindingly obvious I wonder if the entire company leadership is living in an alternate reality. Beyond all the other misguided marketing of the Turbo brand, Turbo C# supports, get this, .NET 1.1. You.Have.Got.To.Be.Kidding.Me. And the company wonders why they're losing money. -- modified at 19:04 Tuesday 5th September, 2006 [PS. I tried the Turbo C++ download. It's a major dissapointment. At the very least I expected practical project management and intellisense and auto formatting that work (auto formatting half worked; intellisense failed miserably on my narrow, simple test project--that's pathetic.) It's like Borland has never rid themselves of the morons who vomited Quattro Pro on us.]
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Everything went wrong when the creative mind behind turbo pascal left the compagny for a nice little job at Microsoft: Anders Hejlsberg. Anders Hejlsberg is the only person in Microsoft of who I say WOW, that guy is a genius ! Come on, he develops (almost) on his own the entire Delphi (Object-Pascal) and Vcl. He is the one and only behind the structure in the .net framework. He develops C#, it just looks (to me) like every language he gets his hands on get very advanced and popular.
Don't you also love the code?
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Chris Maunder wrote:
OK, so a 2.0 version would make more sense
That's the point. Anyone who uses .NET 1.1 on a new project needs their head examined. And who is going to suddenly drop Visual Studio 2003 to switch to Turbo C# mid-project? Maybe they got pissed off at Microsoft. Fine, but does Turbo C# even migrate your Visual Studio Projects? When a smart company introduces a competitor to a well established market niche, they introduce a mature product with a clear differentiator. They don't introduce a has been the moment it hits the streets. In this case, the smart move would have been to target developers who haven't yet committed to Visual Studio 2005 or who have been testing it and are very frustrated with the bugs. That means you need to do everything C# that VS 2005 does but better. (I don't think you need to support C++/CLI. A big reason to support the latter is for P/Invoke, so one differentiator is to provide both assemblies and source snippets covering most the uncovered Win32 APIs.) Borland needed to create a developer experience such that developers are hesitant to move back. Microsoft did this for me with VS 2005 vs. VS 2003 vs. VS 6.0 (yes, 2005 frustrates me, but the overall experience still keeps me from going back.) Turbo C/C++ for DOS did that in spades. Turbo C++ not only doesn't, it makes Visual Studio 2005 look like the best software ever written. Perhaps Turbo C# does this, but I'll never know because I haven't used .NET 1.1 in 18 months and have no intention to go back now. Most potential buyers will ignore it for the same reason. This ranks extremely high on both the stupidity and cluelessness scale. I've seen it before. Worse, Borland has done it before--it's called Quattro Pro (they had a plethora of dumb products around then, though few people remember them.) Almost forgot; they also overpaid for Ashton-Tate. PS. If the goal is to keep Microsoft honest, supporting an obsolete product isn't going to do that. Seriously, what's next? A new Turbo C++ that supports only 16-bit Windows? Or maybe they should buy GEM to threaten Windows.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Joe Woodbury wrote:
Turbo C/C++ for DOS did that in spades. Turbo C++ not only doesn't, it makes Visual Studio 2005 look like the best software ever written.
I think the difference is that Visual Studio 2005 really isn't the best software ever written, nor was Turbo C++ (new flavor) aiming to be the best software ever written. And their intended users aren't the same. I think they ought to have aimed for the title "best software ever written". I'm getting real tired of Visual Studio (2005), and I would love to have a real alternative. Do you know anything about C++ Builder?
-- Mit viel Oktan und frei von Blei, eine Kraftstoff wie Benziiiiiiin!
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Companies like Borland mystify me; their failures are so blindingly obvious I wonder if the entire company leadership is living in an alternate reality. Beyond all the other misguided marketing of the Turbo brand, Turbo C# supports, get this, .NET 1.1. You.Have.Got.To.Be.Kidding.Me. And the company wonders why they're losing money. -- modified at 19:04 Tuesday 5th September, 2006 [PS. I tried the Turbo C++ download. It's a major dissapointment. At the very least I expected practical project management and intellisense and auto formatting that work (auto formatting half worked; intellisense failed miserably on my narrow, simple test project--that's pathetic.) It's like Borland has never rid themselves of the morons who vomited Quattro Pro on us.]
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
It's not actually fair to compare Turbo C# with Visual Studio. Turbo C# is Borland's entry level product. I agree that it would be nice to have .Net 2 capability (not having it makes the product useful for learning how to program only really), but that's what you get (and a whole lot more) with Borland Developer Studio. Borland probably want some differentiator to encourage you to buy the Developer Studio product. It integrates Delphi, C++ and C# into one product. This is the product to compare against Visual Studio if you are making comparisons between serious development tools. - Chris Bowen
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Joe Woodbury wrote:
Turbo C/C++ for DOS did that in spades. Turbo C++ not only doesn't, it makes Visual Studio 2005 look like the best software ever written.
I think the difference is that Visual Studio 2005 really isn't the best software ever written, nor was Turbo C++ (new flavor) aiming to be the best software ever written. And their intended users aren't the same. I think they ought to have aimed for the title "best software ever written". I'm getting real tired of Visual Studio (2005), and I would love to have a real alternative. Do you know anything about C++ Builder?
-- Mit viel Oktan und frei von Blei, eine Kraftstoff wie Benziiiiiiin!
Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote:
I'm getting real tired of Visual Studio (2005), and I would love to have a real alternative. Do you know anything about C++ Builder?
Yeah, it sucks, which is why I'm griping so loudly. I want a lean, fast development environment that does what VS 2005 does except faster and better. Borland didn't even come close with Turbo C++ and Turbo C#. What bugs me is that the flaws in VS 2005 are obvious and have been that way since the first public beta around February 2005. To do something fundamentally better than VS 2005 with the existing code base they had, should have been a walk in the park.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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It's not actually fair to compare Turbo C# with Visual Studio. Turbo C# is Borland's entry level product. I agree that it would be nice to have .Net 2 capability (not having it makes the product useful for learning how to program only really), but that's what you get (and a whole lot more) with Borland Developer Studio. Borland probably want some differentiator to encourage you to buy the Developer Studio product. It integrates Delphi, C++ and C# into one product. This is the product to compare against Visual Studio if you are making comparisons between serious development tools. - Chris Bowen
Chris Bowen wrote:
Turbo C# is Borland's entry level product.
Not according to their announcements. The download version of the Turbo products are supposed to be comparable to Visual Studio Express, which they most certainly aren't. Unless they've changed their mind, the press releases have stated that the "pro" versions will sell for about $500. I've used Borland Developer Studio and was extremely dissapointed in it. It's also pretty much exactly what the Turbo products are but combined into one. (Thus the mystery of what these "pro" versions are going to be.) From a purely brand name aspect, this makes a mockery of the Turbo moniker.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Companies like Borland mystify me; their failures are so blindingly obvious I wonder if the entire company leadership is living in an alternate reality. Beyond all the other misguided marketing of the Turbo brand, Turbo C# supports, get this, .NET 1.1. You.Have.Got.To.Be.Kidding.Me. And the company wonders why they're losing money. -- modified at 19:04 Tuesday 5th September, 2006 [PS. I tried the Turbo C++ download. It's a major dissapointment. At the very least I expected practical project management and intellisense and auto formatting that work (auto formatting half worked; intellisense failed miserably on my narrow, simple test project--that's pathetic.) It's like Borland has never rid themselves of the morons who vomited Quattro Pro on us.]
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Borland did have it once, Quatro Pro the dos version had tabbed workbooks and quite few other features that later appeared in Excel. Paradox (Dos) was a great appliction, handled databases on a 386 with forms and procs and no no system memory compared to todays world of resource hungry Java & .net all before Ms Access was even heard of. There were a lot of business applictions written in Paradox for Windows in the early days of Windows as well. Then can came Delphi 1 with object pascal, light years ahead of any Win 32 development platform from the other vendors, I cant recall where VB was at the time I am pretty sure VB was not capable of compiling anything in those days, Delphi exe database front ends flew, for those of us old enough to remember. Kim
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Companies like Borland mystify me; their failures are so blindingly obvious I wonder if the entire company leadership is living in an alternate reality. Beyond all the other misguided marketing of the Turbo brand, Turbo C# supports, get this, .NET 1.1. You.Have.Got.To.Be.Kidding.Me. And the company wonders why they're losing money. -- modified at 19:04 Tuesday 5th September, 2006 [PS. I tried the Turbo C++ download. It's a major dissapointment. At the very least I expected practical project management and intellisense and auto formatting that work (auto formatting half worked; intellisense failed miserably on my narrow, simple test project--that's pathetic.) It's like Borland has never rid themselves of the morons who vomited Quattro Pro on us.]
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Microsoft hasn't licensed them to use .net 2.0 frameworks. Borland is selling off its software development lines so they can focus on ALM (that info can be found in most computer publications) and, yes, the Borland leaders are true boneheads. For a few years now they have been spending ide development money on there ALM products.
CJA
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Companies like Borland mystify me; their failures are so blindingly obvious I wonder if the entire company leadership is living in an alternate reality. Beyond all the other misguided marketing of the Turbo brand, Turbo C# supports, get this, .NET 1.1. You.Have.Got.To.Be.Kidding.Me. And the company wonders why they're losing money. -- modified at 19:04 Tuesday 5th September, 2006 [PS. I tried the Turbo C++ download. It's a major dissapointment. At the very least I expected practical project management and intellisense and auto formatting that work (auto formatting half worked; intellisense failed miserably on my narrow, simple test project--that's pathetic.) It's like Borland has never rid themselves of the morons who vomited Quattro Pro on us.]
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
>>Beyond all the other misguided marketing of the Turbo brand, Turbo C# supports, get this, .NET 1.1. misguided marketing? i dont know what you are actually talking about, but i know that most of the download mirrors broke down or were at least having heavy trouble due to the tremendous number of download requests! so the marketing cannot be that wrong, can it? but i understand that borland isn't the first choice for the .net junkies!
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Chris Maunder wrote:
OK, so a 2.0 version would make more sense
That's the point. Anyone who uses .NET 1.1 on a new project needs their head examined. And who is going to suddenly drop Visual Studio 2003 to switch to Turbo C# mid-project? Maybe they got pissed off at Microsoft. Fine, but does Turbo C# even migrate your Visual Studio Projects? When a smart company introduces a competitor to a well established market niche, they introduce a mature product with a clear differentiator. They don't introduce a has been the moment it hits the streets. In this case, the smart move would have been to target developers who haven't yet committed to Visual Studio 2005 or who have been testing it and are very frustrated with the bugs. That means you need to do everything C# that VS 2005 does but better. (I don't think you need to support C++/CLI. A big reason to support the latter is for P/Invoke, so one differentiator is to provide both assemblies and source snippets covering most the uncovered Win32 APIs.) Borland needed to create a developer experience such that developers are hesitant to move back. Microsoft did this for me with VS 2005 vs. VS 2003 vs. VS 6.0 (yes, 2005 frustrates me, but the overall experience still keeps me from going back.) Turbo C/C++ for DOS did that in spades. Turbo C++ not only doesn't, it makes Visual Studio 2005 look like the best software ever written. Perhaps Turbo C# does this, but I'll never know because I haven't used .NET 1.1 in 18 months and have no intention to go back now. Most potential buyers will ignore it for the same reason. This ranks extremely high on both the stupidity and cluelessness scale. I've seen it before. Worse, Borland has done it before--it's called Quattro Pro (they had a plethora of dumb products around then, though few people remember them.) Almost forgot; they also overpaid for Ashton-Tate. PS. If the goal is to keep Microsoft honest, supporting an obsolete product isn't going to do that. Seriously, what's next? A new Turbo C++ that supports only 16-bit Windows? Or maybe they should buy GEM to threaten Windows.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
And then people wonder why MS is so dominant. A lot of it is down to mistakes by their competitors rather than just MS's being aggressive.
Kevin
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Actually, it's quite simple really. Many companies suffer from the "wait and see" mentality. They wait on a new technology to start developing on it until it's "proven", but what this means is that by the time they get a product out the door it's almost (or is) obsolete. Let's use a few examples. WordPerfect waited for a "Windows" version of WordPerfect until after Word had completely decimated their chances of getting a foot hold. They wanted to see if this "windows" fad took off. The same thing happened with 32 bit applications for Windows 95. Borland took a number of years before they started work on their .NET version of Delphi and C# at all. Basically, they needed to see their market share start to dwindle, or conversely see their competitors market share start to rise before they would take action, and by then it was simply too late. Technology is no place for wimps. Bet the farm early because if you don't you won't have one to bet.
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
Many companies suffer from the "wait and see" mentality. They wait on a new technology to start developing on it until it's "proven"
Microsoft, by contrast, tend to churn out a first version as quickly as possible. Version 1 is usually crap. But they keep plugging away until they produce a good enough version. Interestingly, there have been various times in the past when Gates virtually invited competitors, or potential ones, to snuff him out, e.g., Lotus and WordPerfect re: Windows. They ignored him and then he all but wiped them out, or marginalised them, instead. He only gives you one chance.
Kevin
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Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote:
I'm getting real tired of Visual Studio (2005), and I would love to have a real alternative. Do you know anything about C++ Builder?
Yeah, it sucks, which is why I'm griping so loudly. I want a lean, fast development environment that does what VS 2005 does except faster and better. Borland didn't even come close with Turbo C++ and Turbo C#. What bugs me is that the flaws in VS 2005 are obvious and have been that way since the first public beta around February 2005. To do something fundamentally better than VS 2005 with the existing code base they had, should have been a walk in the park.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Well at last another man that thinks loudly about this. If we take off the gossip thing then: 1.Companies like Oracle [JDevelop], Borland [Most is IDEs] and other big companies should at least take the biggest competitor (Microsoft) ideas and make them the lowest denominator and add more with speed. 2.check the managers for the stocks they have in other companies + make a department to check all products and what market share are they taken and from that either fire or change the managers. 3.the VS2005 is very beautiful and powerful but it could be much better and it will not because the simple competing IDEs, at least for competitors either stop their products or make one product that most of the big companies work in it, or simply buy the small free products on the market [SharpDev, or PrimalScript]... 4.even if I do not like MS but most of its products have enough ideas that can pull clients to them and that’s as of marketing is a good idea [we are a need driven market], so either others do at least the same and better, or quite. ps, it a shame that small free code IDEs like [SharpDev] is better than big companies IDE's. :((
May god give u good health and knowledge.