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One of the most successful software development firms in history, Borland, was supposed to die multiple times over the past decade. And it's still here, producing incredible development tools.

Here's what Borland has to say:

The Kylix Open Edition ships with CLX(TM) libraries under the GPL license.
As such, any applications that are built with a CLX library must make their sources freely available and distribute them under the terms of the GPL license as well. For example, any application built with the Kylix Open Edition must link to the BaseCLX(TM) library and will therefore be bound to the GPL. Furthermore, the Open Edition IDE End User License Agreement (EULA) also requires that any software developed with Kylix Open Edition must be released to the general public under the terms of the GPL. Any other use of Kylix Open Edition IDE would be in legal violation of the license agreement.

Here's a link. Unforutnately it is a Word document

A little searching will undoubtedly produce others. Basically if the FSF is imagining the bounds of copyright then it is a consensual hallucination with a lot of participants.

If you happen to work with Java, there are quite a few good commercial profilers around that are really easy to setup and use (such as JProfiler or Optimizeit). Try working with one of these for some time and observe how your way of programming changes for the better. Most importantly, you learn not to pre-emptively "improve" performance - one of the deadliest sins of programming which is responsible for a lot of bad and unreadable code.

Here's the link with more info: Borland Kylix Open Edition

-My Karma ran over your Dogma

At my new employment I had a project that needed to be cross platform. I was itching to use Kylix, however it wasn't due to be finished for another 8 months. Looking into the details I saw that they built the corss platform support on QT.

After checking out the QT tutorials I was immediatly hooked. QT is intuitive; I can't think of many other APIs I would grace with this description. In addition to being well thought out it has a superb implementation. I've been using it happily for 2 years.

The only thing I miss is the strong third party component community that Delphi/Kylix has. I'm a huge fan of "buy don't build". You can really put quality touches on your app by finding the right component someone else has already made.

-R

Sorry for the AC :)

It's quietly being used by a lot of software development companies, and due to its RAD and straightforward approach to OO, these companies are running circles around their competitors. Read about Delphi 7's features and weep.

Have you not heard of Kylix Open Edition? You can't be refusing to use it just because the compiler itself is not open source since you just said you use Delphi. Download it and give it a whirl. The new version lets you program in Object Pascal or C++.
Kylix 3 Open Edition free download

add to this a bit of "Microsoft to Buy Rational and/or Borland?" (more informative article article - javatips (66293) ) and you get a better view of the options MS are working on.

Borland are developing their own architectural solution for .NET and remember Rotor already runs on FreeBSD so borgifiying any of Borlands tools into a XP Visual Studio for Linux gives MS means to kill any competition - (Open source Mono classes). Remember MS's MO is to set and 'own the standard'. Nails get hammered and Mono is a target.

Excellent! Where can I pre order Visual Pascal?

Don't you mean Delphi?

I was on the Borland Developer Network page yesterday and found this article on Borland's upcoming .NET IDE.

"Borland plans to offer an alternative to Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET development environment. Such a product could suit application developers that want to leverage .NET and the best applications from many vendors."

The only other .NET IDE I know of today is SharpDevelop, which feels sluggish on my P3 1.2GHz. Anyone know of others?

Create any kind of multiplatform (windows/linux) apps.

Use a WAY better RAD tool than VB (I used VB for a while).

Learn and use a full-featured OO language.

As a bonus, you can even generate .NET applications, if you need.

I use it since its first version (well, since Turbo Pascal 3.0, actually), and, altough it's not the tool I use most in daily job (I deal with Macs a lot), it's simply the best RAD tool I've seen. Try a free download. After all, you're the kind of guy they're targeting now.

Create any kind of multiplatform (windows/linux) apps.

Use a WAY better RAD tool than VB (I used VB for a while).

Learn and use a full-featured OO language.

As a bonus, you can even generate .NET applications, if you need.

I use it since its first version (well, since Turbo Pascal 3.0, actually), and, altough it's not the tool I use most in daily job (I deal with Macs a lot), it's simply the best RAD tool I've seen. Try a free download. After all, you're the kind of guy they're targeting now.

Delphi was rewritten in Delphi as soon as it was powerful enough. You cannot say that about VB (written in C++).

First, being ashamed of doing VB is silly, don't sweat it, and don't pay attention to idiots who tell you otherwise. I've used VB since it was just 'B' and spent most of my career doing hard-core MS-centric projects and getting paid handsomely for it, thank you. During that decade long period I have:

• Bought a new car every two years
• Met and married a beautiful woman
• Purchased a nice home in an expensive neighborhood
• Bought a sailboat
• Had two wonderful children

That being said, I was finally able to get off the Windows treadmill by adopting Java. I now use Mac OS X exclusively at home.

Java GUIs have a bad rep for being slow, but alot of that is changing, and rapidly. Check out Eclipse and the SWT project. I would easily use even Swing for what you've described. Add in a killer IDE like Borland JBuilder and you have the same things you enjoyed in VB only now its on Windows, Linux, and OS X.

As for compiling, what exactly are you doing? Java now ships with JIT compilers that convert bytecode to native code on-the-fly. Of course you have little control over this process, so it's still not as optimal as hand-optimized C, but hey, what is.

For me, Java has now completely replaced VB, and with a far better, more flexible language to boot. I am completely free of MS constraints as well and the bonanza of open-source Java projects out there just makes the geek in me weep with joy. VB has been good to me, but it just can't compete.

How about some of the java IDEs that are out there, NetBeans, Forte, some of borlands offerings perhaps? They are also pretty damn hot not to mention that they are all crossplatform compatible and NetBeans is free. Beat that with your dotNet.

Delphi, C++ Builder and Kylix, together with open-sourced Interbase/Firebird database, make a perfect suite for cross-platform RAD development.

Delphi, C++ Builder and Kylix, together with open-sourced Interbase/Firebird database, make a perfect suite for cross-platform RAD development.

Delphi, C++ Builder and Kylix, together with open-sourced Interbase/Firebird database, make a perfect suite for cross-platform RAD development.

1. According to Borland, the name of the language is now simply "Delphi." This changed as of the release of Delphi 7.
2. Borland C++ and Delphi use the same machine code generator engine, so the optimizations are largely the same. The performance is largely the same. As you said, Delphi is single pass, and parses a good bit faster.
3. For those of you out there saying "huh? Pascal??? No one uses THAT??!?!" Guess again. It is used a lot more than you might think, typically by small, lean shops with insane deadlines like mine.

1. According to Borland, the name of the language is now simply "Delphi." This changed as of the release of Delphi 7.
2. Borland C++ and Delphi use the same machine code generator engine, so the optimizations are largely the same. The performance is largely the same. As you said, Delphi is single pass, and parses a good bit faster.
3. For those of you out there saying "huh? Pascal??? No one uses THAT??!?!" Guess again. It is used a lot more than you might think, typically by small, lean shops with insane deadlines like mine.

• Which IDE you want to use, ranging from Open Source $0 IDE to commercial ones.
• Which source control you want to use, ranging from Open Source $0 source control to commercial ones.
• Which middle tier implementation you want to use, ranging from Open Source $0 application servers to commercial ones
• Which database you want to use, ranging from Open Source $0 databases to commercial ones.

In short, you choose J2EE in order to have a choice of what software you want to use within your business and how much you are willing to pay for it, what hardware (Intel, Sun, IBM) and operating systems (Linux, Windows, Solaris, AIX, OS/400) requirements you have, and what requirements you have on the performance (single Intel box to 64 CPU Sun box to IBM mainframe) and scalability of your application.

You make J2EE match your requirements rather than force yourself to match .NET requirements.

Then why is it alway represented by a two dimensional pallet?

Always? 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

It is often represented two dimensionally because it is difficult to display it three dimensionally. Two dimensional displays most often display Hue and Saturation and completely discard Value.

Color can be coded as RGB (Red/Rreen/Blue) or HSV (Hue/Saturation/Value) or HSL (Hue/SaturationLightness) or YCbCr aka YUV aka YIQ (used in TV) or CMY (Cyan/Magenta/Yellow) or L*a*b* or XYZ. It always requires exactly three components. Note CMYK uses 4, but K is redundant, it improves the quality of ink printing.

it isn't "exact" either, since many humans are missing at least one of the dimensions.

That is precisely why I included the word "normal" in "normal human vision".

-

When was Pascal ever "alive?"

Ask Borland.

It is useful to have individual files to share with other people. But these might not be the same files you originally captured. You'd probably scan in the photos at the highest resolution and color depth your scanner can do. But when you attach an image to an email, you probably need to step it down a bit.

Anyway, you just have to have some kind of organizing software, if you've got so many photos that optimizing scanner time becomes an issue. If I were designing software that did this, I'd use a database, like the biolife example that comes with Delphi and Kylix. But now that I look at what's available, I see that most apps do store images as individual files.

Still, the principles the same. A good organizer can capture new images from your clipboard. So the procedure works out like this:

1. Set organizer to automatically capture from clipboard.
2. Place a bunch of images on the scanner.
3. Scan. (This is the time-consuming part we need to minimize.)
4. Drag a rectangle around an image, and click "copy".
5. Repeat previous step for all images we just scanned.
6. Go to step 2.

Pascal, being as dead in its pure form as a language can be, was bound to be replaced by some OO language.

Then why not object-oriented Pascal?

Name 10 applications written in Java that can be bought at the store.

I believe he was talking about business systems (database clients and like ilk). Java clients have been quite successful in that area, there are tons.

Even so, I'm going to give it a shot, just for fun.

1. LimeWire
2. JBuilder
3. Poseidon for UML
4. BugSeeker
5. IDEA
6. ???
7. Profit!

Dammit, just five, and using developer tools was kind of cheating.

Get a near-monopoly on desktop operating systems, expand into developer tools, and push the competition virually out of the marketplace by making people think they have to use your product. :-)

The same technique works well with web browsers and word processors.

If we ever got legislation mandating open formats for all public documents, Microsoft would be a minor player in the software world within five years.

I doubt that MS would have a problem with this. Look at one of MS's major products, Visual Studio. Anybody could download a copy of DJGPP or Borland's compiler, and just write the code in vim. Instead many people purchase Visual Studio because they prefer the IDE and it's tools. The same with MS Word, you could just as easily write the document in WordPad (of which the source is available). But they don't, because they actually perfer the interface.

A lot of people attribute MS's success to their "closed" formats, but they do actually make some good tools. If there was a mandate for open formats, MS would probably just focus on building better tools to work with those formats.

I guess its official, according to this article, Object Pascal is now called Delphi (see page 11):
"The Object Pascal language is now called the Delphi language. The online Help and documentation have been updated accordingly."
However, the newsgroup (forums.borland.com) for the language is still public.borland.delphi.objectpascal.

Reg: $2999

w/ Discount: $399
Kylix Enterprise

Reg: $1999

w/ Discount: $399
It really is a great price when you figure in all the the features that you get for $400. I know I'll never get use them all, though I'd like to :)

And now you get the same thing for $60 from Borland.

You can download Borland C++ Builder 6 Personal Edition which includes IDE, form designers, compiler, debugger, inline assembler, tons of demos, 1600+ pages of documentation, and an extensive help system.

Sounds like a pretty good bargain to me.

You may want to take a look at Borland's Kylix, the linux-native port of Borland's respocted IDE's for C, C++, and Delphi (they claim it supports the same features as windows versions). It comes with a high quality debugger/profiler, and, while not free, a trial version is available.

Well, I haven't tried it, but what about Borland Kylix? The new version 3 claims to support ANSI/ISO C++ on Linux. And if you read the feature PDF on page 4 they mention many of the features you seek.

It might be worth taking a look.

Well, I haven't tried it, but what about Borland Kylix? The new version 3 claims to support ANSI/ISO C++ on Linux. And if you read the feature PDF on page 4 they mention many of the features you seek.

It might be worth taking a look.

For anything web related (HTML, CSS, PHP) I use HomeSite. It works. Great editor, nice syntax highlighting, lots of nice features. I haven't found anything even remotely comparable for Linux, unfortunately. For C/C++, C++Builder is excellent. The syntax highlighting works well and the editor is amazingly fast. Works on files of literally any size with no slowdowns.

It should be noted that Borland also releases free as in beer "Personal" versions of C++ Builder and Delphi.

Both are similar in features and license to Kylix Open Edition (the Delphi personal description specifically mentions its intended use is to create "non-commercial Windows ... applications". Basically they include all the standard gui VCL components included in the non-free (Professional and Enterprise) versions of C++ Builder and Delphi (just with a different license) minus the data access / web components. Having used Delphi 5 Enterprise extensively at work, I can vouch that for real-world gui and database intensive application development, these features are invaluable timesavers. However, in an educational environment as suggested by the parent post, where the focus would almost certainly be beginning or at most intermediate programming (eg. general language concepts), the Personal versions of either of these would more than suffice for any classroom needs.

In other words, while I wouldn't expect these to provide much of a shot in the arm for schools migrating to Linux, it speaks volumes for Borland and their commitment to Linux (Kylix) and its ideals (the open source-ish license of the Windows-based Personal versions).

It should be noted that Borland also releases free as in beer "Personal" versions of C++ Builder and Delphi.

Both are similar in features and license to Kylix Open Edition (the Delphi personal description specifically mentions its intended use is to create "non-commercial Windows ... applications". Basically they include all the standard gui VCL components included in the non-free (Professional and Enterprise) versions of C++ Builder and Delphi (just with a different license) minus the data access / web components. Having used Delphi 5 Enterprise extensively at work, I can vouch that for real-world gui and database intensive application development, these features are invaluable timesavers. However, in an educational environment as suggested by the parent post, where the focus would almost certainly be beginning or at most intermediate programming (eg. general language concepts), the Personal versions of either of these would more than suffice for any classroom needs.

In other words, while I wouldn't expect these to provide much of a shot in the arm for schools migrating to Linux, it speaks volumes for Borland and their commitment to Linux (Kylix) and its ideals (the open source-ish license of the Windows-based Personal versions).

I've never used C++ builder 6, but borland's C++ builder page says it uses CLX.

So ya don't want to register to download the free Open Edition (GPL'd) or the trial version of Kylix 3.0, but you want to know more? Here ya go:

Screenshots of Kylix IDE...(an alpha version)
http://www.drbob42.com/kylix/hotshot.htm

Features of Kylix 3.0...
http://borland.com/kylix/pdf/kyl3_feamatrix.pdf

Or, go here and take the Product TOUR (if you have time to view their Flash 5 presentation and get all the sales-speak you can swallow i.e. good to show to boss).

So ya don't want to register to download the free Open Edition (GPL'd) or the trial version of Kylix 3.0, but you want to know more? Here ya go:

Screenshots of Kylix IDE...(an alpha version)
http://www.drbob42.com/kylix/hotshot.htm

Features of Kylix 3.0...
http://borland.com/kylix/pdf/kyl3_feamatrix.pdf

Or, go here and take the Product TOUR (if you have time to view their Flash 5 presentation and get all the sales-speak you can swallow i.e. good to show to boss).

Screenshots of Kylix IDE...(an alpha version)
http://www.drbob42.com/kylix/hotshot.htm

Features of Kylix 3.0...
http://borland.com/kylix/pdf/kyl3_feamatrix.pdf

yeah, it is strange they don't have a better tour of the IDE. Perhaps they do want people to download the trail version (and therefore require registration with them so they can sick their sales team on you...)

The best alternative (instead of registering and downloading Kylix 3.0 trial or Open Edition) I found on Borland's site is to take the Product Tour of Kylix. It's a Flash 5 presentation and provides quick glimpses of the IDE, and goes into much detail why Kylix should be considered as development package. Although it's geared more for the Enterprise-level manager than for the greater audience which would be us, the typical software developer.

Please post if you find screenshots!

You can already find out how seemless the Object Pascal/C++ integration will be, Borland C++ Builder

I've used BCB, and it's a quality product. It's not as clean as Delphi, but some PHB's I've seen get scared when you tell them you're going to write software in *shock* something other than C/C++.

When it comes to working with databases it's just hard to beat the usefullness and quality of the Borland database components. You just have to do so much less work when you use them.

How do you talk to an oracle? "The Oracle at Delphi" was the word association that popped into my head. So I offered up "Delphi": If you want to talk to [the] Oracle, go to Delphi.

[1] http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hos-23.07.02-0 00/

[2] http://www.borland.com/kylix/open/index.html

borland has Just released Kylix 3with C++ and Object Pascal support in one product.

Don't know why this hasn't made it to /. yet?

Jeez. That page says that Packages "was not a feature of Pascal". OK, first of all, Pascal is not a past-tense language. It's alive and well. Second of all, every Pascal implementation I know about supports Packages.

Other than Oracle and Postgresql, I don't think any other database uses MVCC.

Postgresql is BSD style (do what you will) while SAP was released under the GPL.

I have job experience using MFC. I will not describe it in detail. I will just sum it up and say that it is truly the most un-productive horrid framework I have ever used. Also, Microsoft's new WTL is no better. In short, the class wizard helps you half the time (if it aint broke when you modify some code) and the message maps are a nightmare. This automatic code generation you speak of is not all that glamorous. All that code generation gives you is a cryptic program that comiles to be Notepad. You're on your own after that. The Document/View architecuture is bad and seems to be a perversion of the Model/View/Controller architecture. Doc/View can be good for small scale, but will break down and give you nightmares on large scale projects.

I started using two pieces of technology, Delphi and Qt, and I have never looked back. At work I use Visual C++ to program DLL's (using STL and no MFC classes at all) and I use Delphi to front end, as well as write the back end stuff too! If I had my choice I would ditch Visual C++ altogether, I think it gives C++ a bad name. I wish most companies would not buy Microsoft Visual C++.

I have never used wxWindows, but I can assume that it is better than MFC. As for cross platform needs MFC still is the worst choice. At one of my previous jobs they had a person that programmed a project for both Windows and Mac OS. There is MFC for the Mac platform. However, this programmer was frustrated by the details because what worked on MFC for Windows worked differently (or not at all) for MFC on Mac OS.

For cross platform I would say check out Qt and check out Delphi / C++ Builder. Qt was one of the best C++ libraries I have ever used and I wish I could use it on Windows at work. Delphi kicks ass in all aspects. IMHO Delphi is the only technology I know that can truly claim the title of being a RAD tool. Kylix is Delphi for Linux. C++ Builder should be ported to Linux by Borland soon enough.