So where is the new Borland?
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
Borldandesque .NET IDE
Here's another issue. If you make it based on .NET, you're constantly in a position of playing catch up. Look at what happened to Delphi, it was constantly playing catch-up to Microsoft as it introduce new APIs. .NET would make it even worse, since you're writing to *their* language, API, everything. One change and you're potentially completely screwed.
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Actually, Borland had to deal both with DOS (a Microsoft product) and Windows, and thus were vulnerable to operating system architecture and API changes, etc. That makes it harder, but obviously not impossible.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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But the entire market was different when Borland started out, unless I'm greatly mistaken. There was not a culture of "it must be free" that permeated everything software related.
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There's no free product comparable to VS, so a lower priced, higher quality product would be viable.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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Agreed. Unlike C++, .Net is essentially Microsoft's toy. You'd be competing with them on their terms. Would one create a separate implementation of .Net or use the one from Microsoft, assuming that's legally possible? The latter option creates an even higher reliance on Microsoft, and the former... well, the implementation of .Net is a massive and difficult undertaking as seen from the Mono project. And frankly software like Visual Studio has gotten so big and complex that it would take a lot of resources to create something that's competitive with it, and that creates a huge risk.
dighn wrote:
And frankly software like Visual Studio and .Net has gotten so big and complex that it would take a lot of resources to create something that's competitive with it, and that creates a huge risk.
Actually I don't agree with you there. A small team of really good programmers working full time on this could churn out some astonishing stuff assuming they didn't try and re-invent the wheel for everything. There are some astonishing projects out there that could taken advantage of for building a tool like this. But getting the seed money to pay a small team, say 5 guys, with full time salaries for a year? Pfft, forget about it.
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Actually, Borland had to deal both with DOS (a Microsoft product) and Windows, and thus were vulnerable to operating system architecture and API changes, etc. That makes it harder, but obviously not impossible.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
True, but the development market wasn't what it is today. As I understand things the market was a lot more open, there was a much wider diversity then than there is now. So people, it seems, were more open to something like this than they are now.
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There's no free product comparable to VS, so a lower priced, higher quality product would be viable.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
True, but there's become a mindset of "if it's not from Microsoft, then I'm probably not going to pay for it". Or at least that's how it appears to me.
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Rob Caldecott wrote:
More competition would be welcome, but taking on MS in the .NET world? Who's going to take that risk?
Borland try this with the Delphi .Net and as result went under.
The narrow specialist in the broad sense of the word is a complete idiot in the narrow sense of the word. Advertise here – minimum three posts per day are guaranteed.
A fair point, but by then they'd evolved into another huge and stupid company (which also killed their C++ product). Being big is often not an advantage, but actually quite the opposite.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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All this talk of MS dev tool lack of quality has me a bit nostalgic for the days when developing for MS technologies wasn't a monopoly. For those of you who haven't studied your IT history, there was once an upstart company named Borland who, back in the days of Pascal and C, developed a killer compiler and IDE, long before MS came along with Visual C++. It was fast. It was full featured. And it was really inexpensive. Turbo Pascal and Turbo C sold for around $89 when the comparable command line MS C compiler was going for $450. Borland made a lot of sales. Takes money to make money, you say? Not so. Philippe Khan, who started this little party, negotiated a full page ad in PC Magazine, around $5k, on 30 day terms when the norm was cash up front. This bought him enough time to make sales, cover his advertising, and hopefully live to fight another day. And he didn't even have the web to help him. Borland made a lot of money. Sure, you can do web development in any language / environment, but there's a huge market out there with MS skills. The same could be said for Windows development. Given the consistently crappy quality in MS tools, release after release, and a huge market of people who would doubtless pay for something better, especially if it was less expensive, my question is this: Where is the new Borland? Back in the day, it was considered a fool's errand to compete with Microsoft but Borland did it successfully using the oldest trick in the book. They offered superior value for less money. Am I really to believe that no one has the talent to write a .NET IDE that could kick Visual Studio's bug ridden posterior? If so, then it's a sad day for the programmer community, to be sure. There's money to be made here. If I wasn't headed for the exits, I might have a go at it myself. But I'd certainly cheer from the sidelines anyone with the talent and the guts to do what's successfully been done before - challenge the MS monopoly on dev tools and in the process not only make a ton of money, but force MS to get back into competing on quality as Borland once did. With no competition, they have no incentive to give us other than the flaky tools we get.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Certainly not at the same scale as the old Borland, but I think JetBrains has been successful at doing what Borland used to do. They have great IDEs for Java and Ruby, and Resharper is a great support for VS. I imagine they don't really want to compete directly with Redmond, but if they came out with a small, light fast IDE for VS, I know I might switch.
-------------- TTFN - Kent
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dighn wrote:
And frankly software like Visual Studio and .Net has gotten so big and complex that it would take a lot of resources to create something that's competitive with it, and that creates a huge risk.
Actually I don't agree with you there. A small team of really good programmers working full time on this could churn out some astonishing stuff assuming they didn't try and re-invent the wheel for everything. There are some astonishing projects out there that could taken advantage of for building a tool like this. But getting the seed money to pay a small team, say 5 guys, with full time salaries for a year? Pfft, forget about it.
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If it can be proved to be profitable, the investors will put up the cash. It could be something as subtle as trying to build an IDE so good that MS will simply buy the company out right.
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There's no free product comparable to VS, so a lower priced, higher quality product would be viable.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
Christopher Duncan wrote:
There's no free product comparable to VS
http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/[^] I don't know how it compares, and the few times I tried I always thought it was pretty flaky, but it's out there. Plus Microsoft now gives away the Express editions.
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If it can be proved to be profitable, the investors will put up the cash. It could be something as subtle as trying to build an IDE so good that MS will simply buy the company out right.
If the post was helpful, please vote! Current activities: Book: Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
It could be something as subtle as trying to build an IDE so good that MS will simply buy the company out right.
Ugh, what a depressing thing to work for. All that hard work, just to see it get swallowed up and disappear. :(
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Certainly not at the same scale as the old Borland, but I think JetBrains has been successful at doing what Borland used to do. They have great IDEs for Java and Ruby, and Resharper is a great support for VS. I imagine they don't really want to compete directly with Redmond, but if they came out with a small, light fast IDE for VS, I know I might switch.
-------------- TTFN - Kent
ReSharper is simply insanely awesome. It is without a doubt one of the top 3 tools that after using I have no idea how I was able to code without.
If the post was helpful, please vote! Current activities: Book: Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
There's no free product comparable to VS
http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/[^] I don't know how it compares, and the few times I tried I always thought it was pretty flaky, but it's out there. Plus Microsoft now gives away the Express editions.
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Its not bad and that's the sum of it. Not bad.
If the post was helpful, please vote! Current activities: Book: Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
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All this talk of MS dev tool lack of quality has me a bit nostalgic for the days when developing for MS technologies wasn't a monopoly. For those of you who haven't studied your IT history, there was once an upstart company named Borland who, back in the days of Pascal and C, developed a killer compiler and IDE, long before MS came along with Visual C++. It was fast. It was full featured. And it was really inexpensive. Turbo Pascal and Turbo C sold for around $89 when the comparable command line MS C compiler was going for $450. Borland made a lot of sales. Takes money to make money, you say? Not so. Philippe Khan, who started this little party, negotiated a full page ad in PC Magazine, around $5k, on 30 day terms when the norm was cash up front. This bought him enough time to make sales, cover his advertising, and hopefully live to fight another day. And he didn't even have the web to help him. Borland made a lot of money. Sure, you can do web development in any language / environment, but there's a huge market out there with MS skills. The same could be said for Windows development. Given the consistently crappy quality in MS tools, release after release, and a huge market of people who would doubtless pay for something better, especially if it was less expensive, my question is this: Where is the new Borland? Back in the day, it was considered a fool's errand to compete with Microsoft but Borland did it successfully using the oldest trick in the book. They offered superior value for less money. Am I really to believe that no one has the talent to write a .NET IDE that could kick Visual Studio's bug ridden posterior? If so, then it's a sad day for the programmer community, to be sure. There's money to be made here. If I wasn't headed for the exits, I might have a go at it myself. But I'd certainly cheer from the sidelines anyone with the talent and the guts to do what's successfully been done before - challenge the MS monopoly on dev tools and in the process not only make a ton of money, but force MS to get back into competing on quality as Borland once did. With no competition, they have no incentive to give us other than the flaky tools we get.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Borland did it successfully using the oldest trick in the book. They offered superior value for less money.
They also changed the rules: Before Borland, run-time licence fees to the compiler manufacturer were the norm. Borland got rid of those.
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Mustafa Ismail Mustafa wrote:
It could be something as subtle as trying to build an IDE so good that MS will simply buy the company out right.
Ugh, what a depressing thing to work for. All that hard work, just to see it get swallowed up and disappear. :(
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Some people will work for a profit, others will work for passion. Personally, I'd like to hit a cross in between, I'm really passionate about my work (not the current stuff though :() but I do have a family to feed and I'd like to think that I made the right choice choosing engineering instead of medicine like my mom wanted (personally, I just don't want to hear her say "I told you so!")
If the post was helpful, please vote! Current activities: Book: Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
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Some people will work for a profit, others will work for passion. Personally, I'd like to hit a cross in between, I'm really passionate about my work (not the current stuff though :() but I do have a family to feed and I'd like to think that I made the right choice choosing engineering instead of medicine like my mom wanted (personally, I just don't want to hear her say "I told you so!")
If the post was helpful, please vote! Current activities: Book: Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov Project: Hospital Automation, final stage Learning: Image analysis, LINQ Now and forever, defiant to the end. What is Multiple Sclerosis[^]?
Couldn't agree more! But still, even though making the presumably large chunk of money you'd get from the sale, it would be really sad to see the software die (which is exactly what would happen).
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! Personal 3D projects Just Say No to Web 2 Point Oh
-
All this talk of MS dev tool lack of quality has me a bit nostalgic for the days when developing for MS technologies wasn't a monopoly. For those of you who haven't studied your IT history, there was once an upstart company named Borland who, back in the days of Pascal and C, developed a killer compiler and IDE, long before MS came along with Visual C++. It was fast. It was full featured. And it was really inexpensive. Turbo Pascal and Turbo C sold for around $89 when the comparable command line MS C compiler was going for $450. Borland made a lot of sales. Takes money to make money, you say? Not so. Philippe Khan, who started this little party, negotiated a full page ad in PC Magazine, around $5k, on 30 day terms when the norm was cash up front. This bought him enough time to make sales, cover his advertising, and hopefully live to fight another day. And he didn't even have the web to help him. Borland made a lot of money. Sure, you can do web development in any language / environment, but there's a huge market out there with MS skills. The same could be said for Windows development. Given the consistently crappy quality in MS tools, release after release, and a huge market of people who would doubtless pay for something better, especially if it was less expensive, my question is this: Where is the new Borland? Back in the day, it was considered a fool's errand to compete with Microsoft but Borland did it successfully using the oldest trick in the book. They offered superior value for less money. Am I really to believe that no one has the talent to write a .NET IDE that could kick Visual Studio's bug ridden posterior? If so, then it's a sad day for the programmer community, to be sure. There's money to be made here. If I wasn't headed for the exits, I might have a go at it myself. But I'd certainly cheer from the sidelines anyone with the talent and the guts to do what's successfully been done before - challenge the MS monopoly on dev tools and in the process not only make a ton of money, but force MS to get back into competing on quality as Borland once did. With no competition, they have no incentive to give us other than the flaky tools we get.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
This perhaps explains the lack of focus in the IDE re: C++ at least MSDN Flash Poll Question Results from last poll: What language would you like to be using in April 2010 for new applications? 55% C# 17% Visual Basic 6% BBC Basic :-) 4% C++ 4% Other 3% F# 3% Ruby 2% Java 2% Python 2% PHP 1% JavaScript 1% Haskell
Kevin
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This perhaps explains the lack of focus in the IDE re: C++ at least MSDN Flash Poll Question Results from last poll: What language would you like to be using in April 2010 for new applications? 55% C# 17% Visual Basic 6% BBC Basic :-) 4% C++ 4% Other 3% F# 3% Ruby 2% Java 2% Python 2% PHP 1% JavaScript 1% Haskell
Kevin
I'd like to see the difference between those poll results and What language will you be using in April 2010 for new application development ... Just because a developer wants to use C#, doesn't mean they get to ... Just a thought. :)
:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |VCF|wxWidgets|WTL -
This perhaps explains the lack of focus in the IDE re: C++ at least MSDN Flash Poll Question Results from last poll: What language would you like to be using in April 2010 for new applications? 55% C# 17% Visual Basic 6% BBC Basic :-) 4% C++ 4% Other 3% F# 3% Ruby 2% Java 2% Python 2% PHP 1% JavaScript 1% Haskell
Kevin
This means 72% of the developers that are surfing instead of working are .NET developers. :)
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I'd like to see the difference between those poll results and What language will you be using in April 2010 for new application development ... Just because a developer wants to use C#, doesn't mean they get to ... Just a thought. :)
:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |VCF|wxWidgets|WTL -
I was a very happy user of their tools since Turbo C for DOS. They blew it with Borland C++ 5 which had one of the crappiest bug-ridden IDEs I ever had the misfortune to use. Sigh. Apparently all their best people had been moved to the Delphi project in order to try and compete with VB and they left the interns in charge of their flagship C++ product. Back in the day I was *this* close to using OWL instead of MFC as my Windows C++ framework of choice but my boss, who could see the writing on the wall, convinced me to use MFC and my love affair with Borland started to wane. I'm not a .NET guy, but as far as C++ development goes, I think the Qt framework and it's new IDE, Qt Creator, could be worth keeping an eye on. I have yet to use Qt but I am itching for an excuse to get busy with it as by all accounts, it's a great framework - plus you get cross-platform support out of the box. Being able to write a modern C++ GUI and target Linux and the Mac has piqued my interest, especially now the Qt licensing is more relaxed. But, to be fair (again from a C++ POV), if MS fixed the crappy Intellisense bugs in VS2008 and supplied a help system that wasn't shamefully bad, then I'd be quite happy. Visual Assist X has fixed the first problem for me, and Google pretty much takes care of the second, so any competition in this area would have to be pretty special. The Qt framework and multiple OS support *might* be a start. If MS actually listened to developers, that would be something. There are bugs in Visual Studio that have been present since VS2003, and that's just taking the piss. More competition would be welcome, but taking on MS in the .NET world? Who's going to take that risk? They'd need something gold-plated and incredibly reliable to do so and a development like that is no mean feat.
Rob Caldecott wrote:
I'm not a .NET guy, but as far as C++ development goes, I think the Qt framework and it's new IDE, Qt Creator, could be worth keeping an eye on. I have yet to use Qt but I am itching for an excuse to get busy with it as by all accounts, it's a great framework - plus you get cross-platform support out of the box. Being able to write a modern C++ GUI and target Linux and the Mac has piqued my interest, especially now the Qt licensing is more relaxed. But, to be fair (again from a C++ POV), if MS fixed the crappy Intellisense bugs in VS2008 and supplied a help system that wasn't shamefully bad, then I'd be quite happy. Visual Assist X has fixed the first problem for me, and Google pretty much takes care of the second, so any competition in this area would have to be pretty special. The Qt framework and multiple OS support *might* be a start.
Qt have (a level of) Visual Studio support[^] - I think my ideal GUI development setup for Windows would be Visual Studio + Visual Assist + Qt. Qt is just so much nicer to develop for than MFC - the framework underlying MFC hasn't been seriously worked on for years...and it shows. [edit] In answer to the unasked (as yet) question 'Why use Visual Studio at all?' I prefer VC++ to gcc on Windows [/edit]
Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p