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Borland Delphi had this feature in version 5, which was released 1999, and was definitely in use by October of that year.

Borland Delphi had this feature in version 5, which was released 1999, and was definitely in use by October of that year.

Agreed. And, older versions of Borland's Turbo Pascal 5.5 (for DOS) are available for free. Not sure if this runs on Windows versions, but if you're running Linux you can look into DOSemu or DosBox.

I did some work with it in high school many years ago, and as I recall I really liked the IDE - it had some syntax highlighting capability, and you could "step" through the code interactively, which made debugging very easy (you could see exactly where the program went, and it highlighted exactly where it errored out).

Unfortunately I don't remember the text book title we used, although as I recall our comp. sci. teacher said there were a number to choose from at the time.

COBOL is so easy, business types can learn it. Check out these freebie COBOL languages.

Pascal is one of the easiest languages to learn, they used to teach it in high school. Lazarus has a good IDE to help with development. Also Delphi has a free demo to download and try out.

Also consider Lingo.

If she still cannot program in those, give up. They are about the easiest there is to learn. Not everyone can learn how to program. Instead teach her how to draw pictures in TuxPaint and if she fails to learn that one, take away her Internet privliges.

You can download a free Personal Edition of Delphi for Windows (or Kylix for Linux) from www.borland.com, but you might want to start teaching in freepascal (because Delphi can look a little intimidating when you first use it). You can get a (free) copy from www.freepascal.org .

As a kid I learned on BASIC. For some reason the line numbers really helped me. I saw C but without an introduction to programming, it seemed so "free form" that I couldn't understand what was going on. I'd imagine you can't walk too far in a cube farm without tripping over someone's old copy of Quick Basic, so that should be easy to get.

If not that, then Pascal is verbose and well-structured. Reading it out loud almost makes sense in English.

For Pascal, you can either download an old version of Turbo Pascal from Borland: http://community.borland.com/article/0,1410,20803, 00.html or ask a buddy -- someone is bound to have a copy lying around. I know I've seen it in bargain bins at book stores in the past.

Maybe, just maybe, she could also try Delphi (think Visual Basic but with Pascal and not as icky), the Personal edition is free: http://www.borland.com/products/downloads/download _delphi.html

As a kid I learned on BASIC. For some reason the line numbers really helped me. I saw C but without an introduction to programming, it seemed so "free form" that I couldn't understand what was going on. I'd imagine you can't walk too far in a cube farm without tripping over someone's old copy of Quick Basic, so that should be easy to get.

If not that, then Pascal is verbose and well-structured. Reading it out loud almost makes sense in English.

For Pascal, you can either download an old version of Turbo Pascal from Borland: http://community.borland.com/article/0,1410,20803, 00.html or ask a buddy -- someone is bound to have a copy lying around. I know I've seen it in bargain bins at book stores in the past.

Maybe, just maybe, she could also try Delphi (think Visual Basic but with Pascal and not as icky), the Personal edition is free: http://www.borland.com/products/downloads/download _delphi.html

Hmm... I think this is almost what the CLR and .Net Framework allows (downloaded F#yet?), and if Sun wanted it to, the JVM could be used to do the same thing - one just has to write the compiler/interpreter spit out Java Bytecode into the JVM to run.

So the only thing missing then is the XML files that sort of allow this.

But, at this website C# to Delphi8 Converter, one can post C# code and it will spit out Delphi 8 .Net code, so...

tight coupling of language and development environment can mean added productivity, but it also tends to mean less flexibility in practice ...but then there are Delphi, JBuilder, SharpDevelop, Eclipse, etc., IDEs HIGHLY dependent on their underlying languages, and all more or less successful (enough).

It's really "Sailing the WINE Dork C. That's why the geeks mattered.

In my case, I had some admin experience and some development experience, when I tackled a job as a Conf. Mgr. My official title was "software engineer," but I was administering their Revision Control system, StarTeam.

Yes, I did get to influence a lot of policies, and I quickly learned that Conf. Mgmt is NOT a bunch of useless administravia. There are very real benefits to such systems, if they are used properly.

Given the chance, go for it. It's a real eye-opener, and your development practices will never be the same.

If it's just the IDE you're missing (and I wasn't aware that the Mono people were writing one), then you might want to take a look at icsharpcode.net. One of the projects (#Develop) is a free-as-in-both IDE for .NET.

In addition to that, Borland have a personal edition of C# Builder available, which is free as in beer, but not licensed for commercial use.

Jbuilder tells me in real time every sytax error in my code, I guess that's debugging.

It also has good refactoring support, so no need to debug my poor hand refactoring. I guess that's kinda debugging.

And it's very good at displaying my code in a way that allows me to find any bugs before running it, getters, setters, things I may have wanted to overload, UML diagrams etc... So I guess that's debugging.

Debugging without even having to run the application, and wizards to perform all the monkey work so you don't gte bugs in the first place and intergrated junit testing.

I think Eclipse has simila support.

I'm not a very experianced java programmer, but my productivity is more than 4 times that of a friend whos been programming in java for more than 6 years. I do very little runtime debugging because my code is by and large bug free thanks to the design time and code time debugging in the IDE.

Go download jbuilder trial or Eclipse with some sister project plugins (eclipse is a bit of a pain to use because it's still quite a recient product)

THE fastest compiler ever. Compiled Qt in 20 minutes where g++ takes 3-4 hours! Visual C++ is at least twice as slow as Borland.

Borland has offered free downloads of C++ Builder (and some tools) for quite some time.

In case you don't know, Kylix is dead. You can't even run it on a supported OS: the latest Kylix 3 supports Red Hat 7.2, Mandrake(TM) 8.2, and SuSE(R) 7.3 - none of which is supported by appropriate OS vendor.

I like eclipse, it's quite nice, and for server side stuff it's pretty good. But until they get a Swing designer that is a least close to the one in JBuilder I wouldn't use the term "best".

And don't start in on SWT vs. Swing. I don't care. Swing is good enough. All I want is a designer that doesn't require a meta file, or mark up my code with uneditable sections.

Give JBuilder a shot. You can download a demo of Enterprise that will revert to foundation after 30 days. Yes, I know, it's not open source. But it's Swing designer is very good, and JB X has just about every feature I've found in Eclipse and they are clearly more aware of usability.

As a self-employed database developer (for 10 years) I've been using Borland's Delphi to talk to MySQL.

Although Delphi is not open source, I prefer it to the typical MS Access / VB answer for Windows platforms, and Delphi has a very mature IDE (developer interface) which is most important when building lots of applications.

In the end, you, as a developer need to figure out what tool you want to use. I think it's great there are so many choices. On the project I'm working with all but one are using IDEA and the last one uses Eclipse. We have no problems at all interoperating. We all use the same source, and the same Apache Ant scripts. So why should we care about this?

Then, with more and more languages, especially ones with VMs, you get further and further away from the hardware. The end result: you lose performance. It does more and more for you, but at the expense of real optimizations, the kind that only you can do.

Now the zealots will come out and say, "Language X is better than language Y, see!" To me this argument is boring. I tend to use the appropriate tool for the job. So:

• Python for scripts, prototypes, proofs of concept, or components where performance generally is not an issue.
• For desktop apps, Visual Basic (yep, most IT apps are in VB). There is no justifiable reason for an IT department group to write a sales force reporting system in C++! If you want C++, go get a job at a software company. Stop wasting money and time making yourself feel like a hotshot. [I'd consider Kylix here if it was based on Basic. Why? Because honestly, Pascal is just about dead, and Basic is the king of the simple app. Let's just live with it and move on. I do want a cross-platform VB . . . ]
• For web apps, well, I stick around PHP/ASP.NET. Why? Portability! And moreover, the sticking point in a web-based app is not the UI layer; it's usually the underlying data extraction and formatting. Don't waste your time with lower level languages there. IMHO it's just not worth it. JSP and Java stuff, yuck! Too much time for too little bang.
• Java/C# (also consider mono/LISP for most production apps. Why? Portability! I want no vendor holding me by the balls. I want platform independence on the back end, and these are the few ways to achieve it. I'd include Haskell/OCAML here when appropriate. Perl? I'm loathe to use Perl as production, considering most Perl code cannot be understood 2 weeks after it's written. I'd rather take the hit in performance and be able to pass the code to someone else later.
• C++/C for components--just components--where performance is at an absolute premium or there exists some critical library that only has this kind of interface. But this step has to be justified by the team, with considerable explanation why a different architecture could not suffice. Otherwise, the team could waste time checking for dangling pointers when instead it could be doing other things, like finishing up other projects.
• Assembly? Only when there is not a C complier around. Embedded stuff. Nowadays, you just do not have the time to play.

Yes, my teams use many languages, but they also put their effort to where they get the biggest bang for the buck. And in any business approach, that's the key goal. You don't see carpenters use saws to hammer in nails or drive screws. Wise up!

I'm amazed to hear mySQL still does not support transactions. That's hilarious. I assume it now does locking by rows because otherwise it would be just another Access.

Oracle is not too bad but the tools are bad. The two big Oracle shops I've worked in used Toad. At least M$FT provide good tools with SQL Server and you can go online and find the Sybase answers when something doesn't work as expected (Sybase docs are consistent with SQL Server even now as far as my experience!).

My buddy had a good idea that software companies should be fined for bugs.
TimJowers

Borland has given away their 5.5 series of command line compilers. You get no IDE, but it comes with Turbo Debugger, Turbo C++, and some other crap. Go to their site here and tool around a bit.

I assume that you are working with relational databases, although you don't mention it.. (data modeling could mean a lot of things)

Some DBMSs have some decent, albeit limited graphical design tools (MSSQL, Access..)

together from borland does entity relationship diagramming, and so much more. (great tool)

I believe IBM's rational rose may also do it.

Since my job includes SQL design as a subset of my duties (i'm a developer/architect, not a DBA) these two tools are significantly more valuable than ERWin.

I just wish I could get my boss to buy them. :)

> One of the articles you presented was an exposition of the
> difference between writing for GTK in C and Python and Qt in C++.
> It seemed a little apples-and-oranges, since nice C++ interfaces
> are available for GNOME.

Maybe it -seemed-, yep. Unfortunately, it -is- not, as clearly expressed in another of the articles I presented, that from a Rosegarden developper, written after he switched to Qt/KDE from GTK/GNOME-with-C++. Interestingly, you'll note that the GTKmm maintainers didn't understand either how Qt/KDE in particular made his life a lot easier.

Besides, I still have more articles to link to -- I've been studying that precise issue for quite some time now, you know, and ressources on that matter don't lack. Although I fully understand why you wouldn't want to hear that... Apparently, from the way our minds work, emotional reactions have a lower interrupt level than what philosophers like to call our higher functions, which, frankly, sucks. (Which is why I tried to thoroughly study the depth of -both- desktop environments before I cared either way, if you want to know.)

> If you want to talk about the proprietary companies on GUIs, you
> might consider that HP and Sun do that on GNOME. Even on their
> Unix platforms.

I know, yes. However, and even though for each of these two you could prolly quote as many or twice as many other companies using the other desktop API, there's another reason still why Sun and HP are a subtly, but importantly different matter, I think.

They're selling desktops for OTHER people to develop on. It's -their- best interest to make the offer look as cheap as possible, and then let the customers deal with the (possible) costs of additional development times. Which is exactly what they should be doing, of course. That's what MS does as well, and it works great, commercially speaking.

Besides, you'll note that both Sun and HP are large corporations with money to spare, making them not the best example one could pick when talking about which choice is less costly, I think.

> One of the things I'd like to go for is the principle of least surprise.

I totally agree with you on this! Not on your conclusion, however.
In terms of development, the principle of least surprise would have it that development tools are paid for separately. Sometimes much expensively.

This, frankly, sucks. But that's the principle of least surprise for you, though, I suppose...

The best situtation would be to be able to develop either way without fixed costs, of course. As another poster suggested, the best thing that could happen to the Linux desktop would be if someone like IBM bought off Qt and LGPL'ed it. However, until then, people for whom money isn't a commodity will pick the least costly choice. That's the way this world works, unfortunately. I wish it was otherwise, you can believe me.

So linux is no longer un-american eh?
Finally, I can have a go at it ;-)
Maybe the army has to recruit some more IT-personnel...

Go here and select personal.

It would be nice if there was a review somewhere from somebody who had actually used the product.. or even just some screenshots?

here's a swf demo of it.

C++BuilderX is a totally different creature then the prior C++Builders. It uses an IDE similar to the JBuilder IDE (written in Java). I have not used it, but just read about it. I get the impression it is designed for C/C++ developers who like to get down to the metal, and are not so worried about Rapid Application Development, hence no VCL (AFAIK). You can download a Personal Edition (free) or the Enterprise Edition trial (time limited).

If you don't typically use the VCL, and want the flexibility of multiple platforms and compilers it sounds like something you should look into. What struck me as interesting is it does not run on Mac. I recall one of the prior editions of JBuilder ran on Mac, but doesn't anymore. Not sure why that support was discontinued.

Unfortunately advertising is not Borland's strong point. They just make good development tools.

I don't get it. What does this one have that JBuilder hasn't had for about five years? Or am I missing something?

How is this different than Borland's JBuilder?

The open version is free, as long as the apps written are licensed under GPL. Funny how many people don't know even though Borland shouted it.

If you really want to know why it's not catching on, well, Linux has a minority of desktops (which Delphi is strong at) and Delphi for Windows is waning fast (which is unfortunate). A small percentage of a small percentage is a pretty small benefit for Borland.

Ozwald

I believe Kylix was designed for Delphi development from the beginning. I noticed recently Borland has released C++ BuilderX 1.0 (a Java-based C++ IDE), with Personal Edition available as free download. How will this affect the progress on Kylix? Any ideas?

Go to Borland's Website and check out their preview of C# Builder, or go here to see their preview of Octane (Delphi for .NET). Both "previews" are available as flash (maybe shockwave, I can't tell the difference). Both "previews" are very graphical, make use of music, and even show an application being built.

Of course, there's no actual information present, and both of the "previews" suck major ass. They aren't really useful at all, except to maybe provide entertainment to those PHB's who are drooling at their desks while tripping on acid.

Needless to say, my desire to purchase either product (C# builder or Octane) is not encouraged in any way. Then again, the price of both does little in that way as well. They probably would have been better off selling Octane as a "Snap-In" extension for Visual Studio than trying to pawn it off as a new IDE.

Go to Borland's Website and check out their preview of C# Builder, or go here to see their preview of Octane (Delphi for .NET). Both "previews" are available as flash (maybe shockwave, I can't tell the difference). Both "previews" are very graphical, make use of music, and even show an application being built.

Of course, there's no actual information present, and both of the "previews" suck major ass. They aren't really useful at all, except to maybe provide entertainment to those PHB's who are drooling at their desks while tripping on acid.

Needless to say, my desire to purchase either product (C# builder or Octane) is not encouraged in any way. Then again, the price of both does little in that way as well. They probably would have been better off selling Octane as a "Snap-In" extension for Visual Studio than trying to pawn it off as a new IDE.

My question is this: is there a place for proprietary (read 'closed') applications on said open/free platforms and frameworks?

Yes.

WebLogic

Acrobat Reader

StarTeam, Together Control Center

StarOffice

WebSphere

That's just off the top of my head.

Borland C++ Builder 5.0 has an ANSI compliant compiler, including STL support. I'm sure 6.0 also does.

I remember that it was such a big deal that it was advertised on the box. Check it out.

These are some of the free (speech or beer) software I'd install on a family, non-gaming machine:

• Web Browser: Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird
• E-mail: Mozilla (cross-platform), Mozilla Thunderbird (cross-platform), Evolution (Gnome), or KMail (KDE)
• Office Suite: OpenOffice.org
• Media Player: QuickTime (Windows), Zinf (cross-platform), RealPlayer (cross-platform), WinAmp (Windows), MPlayer (Windows), XMMS (Linux)
• Image Viewer: IrfanView (Windows)
• Instant Messaging: Gaim (cross-platform)
• Personal Information Management: Palm Desktop Software (great PIM suite even if you don't own a Palm)
• Other: Acrobat Reader (although I'm weary of their DRM), Java 2 Runtime Environment, Macromedia Flash and Shockwave players, Ad-Aware (spyware remover for Windows), ZoneAlarm, Sygate Personal Firewall (firewall, alternative to ZoneAlarm), Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus, FileZilla, WinRAR (not free, shareware with nag window), Ofoto desktop software (basic photo album and touch-ups, even if you don't use Ofoto's online services)

Some other software I'd install on my own desktop (dev), in decreasing order of importance:

• Cygwin, bascially all packages
• UltraEdit32 (45-day trial shareware)
• TightVNC
• Ghostscript and GSView
• Java 2 SDK
• Eclipse
• Borland JBuilder Personal
• ActiveState Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk (yes, even though they are in Cygwin), Jython
• GIMP
• POV-Ray
• At least one of Apache, Tomcat, or Plone (Zope)
• HTTrack (a website copier)

As numerous people have pointed out, 100K of objects per session is insane.

There are dozens of tools out there you can use to track down the bottlenecks in your code.

http://www.quest.com/jprobe

http://www.quest.com/performasure

http://www.borland.com/optimizeit/index.html

http://www.wilytech.com

Any of these tools, along with a competent developer/analyst, can improve your app performance. I used to teach classes on Java performance tuning at one of these companies and I saw people get huge performance improvements from very simple changes - once they knew what to change.

[Java] isn't ready to be used for anything with a GUI

Better warn those C/C++ developers using Borland's C++BuilderX IDE.

It's written in Java and uses Swing, just as JBuilder has for years.

Links for the other two products FYI (they both support extensive Web Service dev functions):

JBuilder Enterprise
IBM WebSphere SDK for Web Services (free)

Screen shots are in the PDF brochuers here
and here

Screen shots are in the PDF brochuers here
and here

it's just slow at downloading.

i'm only getting 13k/s.

fyi the direct link to the swf is http://www.borland.com/cbuilderx/tour/C++BuilderX% 20Turbo%20Demo.swf

18.5meg

1. C++BuilderX development environment runs on Windows, Linux, and Solaris

2. Tight integration between C++BuilderX and multiple industry leading C and C++ compilers -- Borland C++ for Windows, Intel 32-bit compilers for Windows and Linux, Microsoft Visual C++ 7.1, Sun Forte C++, Metrowerks C++ and the GNU C++ Compiler Collection -- keeps you in control of your technology decisions.

3. C++BuilderX is designed to simplify the concurrent management of source code through tight integration with Borland(R) StarTeam,(R) an automated configuration and change management system, as well as Concurrent Versions System (CVS), Rational(R) ClearCase,(R) and Microsoft(R) Visual SourceSafe.(R)

It's already out. It's called C#Builder. I have a demo of it. It's neat, but I don't see its value of Visual Studio .NET just yet. I need to spend more time with it.

another comment posted a link to "screenshots" (actually a flash demo containing screenshots) here:
http://www.borland.com/cbuilderx/tour/View_C++Buil derX%20Turbo%20Demo.htm

does anyone else find it VERY ODD that a C++ IDE is written in Java Swing?

There's a REALLY low-quality screenshot in the "Tech Overview" pdf. You can hardly see anything, though.

Screenshots galore:

href="http://www.borland.com/cbuilderx/tour/View_C ++BuilderX%20Turbo%20Demo.htm

Some tools just make developing certain kinds of applications more efficient, take VisualBasic for example. There's not much else that can compare to the RAD capabilities of VB.

That just show how far from reality M$ as dragged you. Delphi is a lot better at this than VB and you can have the same on Linux with Kylix

By the way, they even have a free version with about the only requirement is that you release your program under the GPL.

And don't get me started on why VB is bullshit, regardless of being an M$ product.

If you had told me back in 1982, when I was programming in M$-BASIC on my first computer (COCO2) that I would still be coding in BASIC 20 years later, I would have laugh to death

BASIC whas a shitty language in 1982. Thanks to M$, is still is today ;-)

Some tools just make developing certain kinds of applications more efficient, take VisualBasic for example. There's not much else that can compare to the RAD capabilities of VB.

That just show how far from reality M$ as dragged you. Delphi is a lot better at this than VB and you can have the same on Linux with Kylix

By the way, they even have a free version with about the only requirement is that you release your program under the GPL.

And don't get me started on why VB is bullshit, regardless of being an M$ product.

If you had told me back in 1982, when I was programming in M$-BASIC on my first computer (COCO2) that I would still be coding in BASIC 20 years later, I would have laugh to death

BASIC whas a shitty language in 1982. Thanks to M$, is still is today ;-)

C# Builder

Not sure if this is what you're looking for but they will probably get it on linux before too long (like C++/Kylix).