Title: Borland: 'Z' bend ahead

Author: Alan Lenton

Date: 30 November 2006 11:07:40 +00:00 or Thu, 30 November 2006 11:07:40 +00:00

Summary: [30-11-2006] Borland performs yet another 'U' turn - developers too dizzy to care.

Body: You've got to hand it to Borland for its ability to completely screw up both itself and its developer community. Last February it announced it was going to flog off its developer tools and IDE division. The result? Loyal and long suffering users, like me, came to the conclusion that Borland management's long standing hostility to its only successful product had final produced the obvious result - a dead product. We, the users, left in droves - well, as much as the miserable remnant of a once mighty user base can be described as a 'drove'.

Now Borland has reversed course yet again. It seems that potential buyers could recognise a dead parrot when they saw one, and steered well clear. Will I go back? Sorry guys, I've already invested time, and money, in moving my skills over to Trolltech's Qt. In many ways I find Borland C++ Builder easier to use, but I can live with that, given that Trolltech's senior management actually like, and are enthusiastic about, their product!

So goodbye from me to the company that produced the first compilers that didn't take 20 minutes to compile 'Hello world!', the first company to give its users a license that was sensible and in plain English, and the first company that was such a threat to Microsoft's hegemony in the field that they were compelled to push massive resources into producing a decent compiler and IDE (well a half decent IDE!).

I'll drink to the memory of the company you once were next time I go down to the pub.

http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/11/17/borland_codegear_nosale/

Notes: 

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