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For Java we have a really nice choice of profilers. There are basically three great products available, all of them have proved to be absolutely useful. There is JProbe, OptimizeIt and JProfiler (the 2.0 beta of JProfiler looks cool). I don't know what the problems on Linux are, but when programming Java, profiling is quite an enjoyable task.

Have you heard of Interbase? It's an industrial-strength DBMS written by Borland, very much along the lines of Oracle/MS-SQL et al. Did you know they open-sourced it a few years ago? The result:

Firebird

Firebird is ACID-compliant, includes stored procedures, views, sub-selects, transactions, replication, etc. (ie. all the stuff that MySQL doesn't do/claims to do "soon" in the documentation), and runs on the following platforms:

• 32-bit Windows
• Linux (i386)
• Solaris (Sparc)
• HP-UX (i386)
• MacOS X

Lesser-supported builds:

• FreeBSD
• Solaris (i386)
• Sand AIX

Historically, Firebird (under it's original name) has also been built and run on the following platforms: DG-UX, SGI-IRIX, NCR3000, CRAY, DEC-Ultrix, DEC-VMS, UnixWare, Apollo, OS2, Novell Netware and HP MPE/XL.

So it's definitely NOT a "database built by volunteers". Besides, the coders/contributors to the Firebird source that I've personally spoken to (and that hang around the Delphi-DB list) I'd rate as some of the most knowledgeable dbms experts around. Want to contribute?

Have you heard of Interbase? It's an industrial-strength DBMS written by Borland, very much along the lines of Oracle/MS-SQL et al. Did you know they open-sourced it a few years ago? The result:

Firebird

Firebird is ACID-compliant, includes stored procedures, views, sub-selects, transactions, replication, etc. (ie. all the stuff that MySQL doesn't do/claims to do "soon" in the documentation), and runs on the following platforms:

• 32-bit Windows
• Linux (i386)
• Solaris (Sparc)
• HP-UX (i386)
• MacOS X

Lesser-supported builds:

• FreeBSD
• Solaris (i386)
• Sand AIX

Historically, Firebird (under it's original name) has also been built and run on the following platforms: DG-UX, SGI-IRIX, NCR3000, CRAY, DEC-Ultrix, DEC-VMS, UnixWare, Apollo, OS2, Novell Netware and HP MPE/XL.

So it's definitely NOT a "database built by volunteers". Besides, the coders/contributors to the Firebird source that I've personally spoken to (and that hang around the Delphi-DB list) I'd rate as some of the most knowledgeable dbms experts around. Want to contribute?

Well we have the nice easy to use desktop, now we need to come up with some easy to use development tools. While I'm a Linux user and have been for over 2 years now I never develop or help develop anything. I did on the other hand look into Borland's Kylix for the simple fact that it's rapid development just like VB and it has a nice pretty little IDE. On top of that they have Open Edition for amateur or hobbyist programmers. For something kind of like Access I think Data Architect from theKompany looks like a nice tool. Then again that's just me, I'm sure you can find a ton of tools and IDEs for Linux of you just looked.

Just thought I'd drop a few links that those of us using Borland's fantastic Delphi should definitely check out:

• DUnit- is an Xtreme testing framework, very similar to JUnit for Java (on which DUnit is based). The basic idea is that you develop appropriate verification tests at the same time you develop your code, and then use these test to make sure you haven't screwed anything up inadvertantly! Free and Open Source (Mozilla 1.1)
• PASDoc is the Pascal equivalent of JAVADoc, which lets you automatically generate HTML and LaTeX documentation directly from your Pascal unit source code files. Nice!
• GPProfile - a nice free and Open Source profiler for Delphi. Does what it says on the tin.
• MemCheck is a debugging tool which hunts memory leaks, memory corruption, use of an object after its destroying, etc. Very useful, if a bit archaic to use. Free and Open Source.
• OptimalCode is a fantastic site dedicated to high-performance Delphi code. If you need to optimise a routine so it's faster than sh*t off a shovel, this site'll show you how.

That should be enough to get your code into shape, get cracking :)

And of course, there's always the Free Pascal compiler, which only supports some of the syntactical candy of Delphi/Kylix.

And of course, there's always the Free Pascal compiler, which only supports some of the syntactical candy of Delphi/Kylix.

Firebird is open source (read: free). It's based on the the well-known InterBase. It probably even outperforms Oracle, while simultaneously being a lot less complicated and buggy. California taxpayers may now commence screaming.

For easily installable Java applications take a look at Java Web Start. I guess installation/execution of Java apps cannot get much easier than it gets with Java Web Start. Just install the Web Start software which comes equipped with a JRE and click the link to the software you want to launch. Web Start takes care of getting the newest version, caches the latest version and then executes it using Java's extensive security mechanisms. You want to get access to otherwise restricted areas of the user's computer? Go ahead and digitally sign your application - the user can now grant the application the rights it needs. For an example application, look at the Web Start version of TopCoder or the UML modelling software Argo UML.

Java came a long way, baby - and there will be a lot of way ahead. With the next releases of Java focussing more and more on speed improvements, your speed problems should go away as well. And, BTW, there currently are Java apps which run very fast - take a look Borland JBuilder - a Java IDE written in Java. And it runs smooooth!

.bbr fear women playing with delete functions - next time it could be you.

Dammit.. I'm sorry bad linking. References to it's use can be found here and here.

The Personal Edition is $100 if you must have a CD, but it's also made available for free via download.

• Dev-C++.
  
• Borland 5.5 (free command line version) + Emacs or V IDE

As an example let me talk a little about Trolltechs approach with Qt and Borlands approach with JBuilder In both these cases I as an end-user get access to a good product that I can try out and build my own opinion of, not influenced by marketing hype.

If I like the products, I'll be more inclined towards using them in a production enviroment, and I'll gladly buy The Product (pun intended).

On the other hand, if I don't have a chance to try out a companies products before I buy them, or if I am forced to withstand outrageous license agreements, phone-home "features" or Digital Rights Management then that company can forget to have me as a customer. I'll get something else...

• VisiCalc
• Borland Turbo Pascal/C
• classic outliners e.g. Symantec MORE, ThinkTank

ActiveX does enter the picture, though, because its pretty simple to write ActiveX components that handle a lot of the COM busywork. Delphi and C++ Builder ship with utilities that help generate such components.

ActiveX does enter the picture, though, because its pretty simple to write ActiveX components that handle a lot of the COM busywork. Delphi and C++ Builder ship with utilities that help generate such components.

On the contrary... 1) a visit to JB Patches, will show an entire list of patches, the more recent ones being 'comprehensive' (i.e. across the product, not just highly focused). 2) they offer free downloads of their Ent. Trial (30 day trial?) by which you can see what bugs there are, before laying down your cash. Also available is the free Personal edn, which has no time out. No, it doesn't have the full 'enterprise' feature set. No, its license does not allow it to be used for.... is it "commercial development"? But it also allows for 'try before you buy'. 3) sure their s/w has bugs. sure they charge for subsequent upgrades, where there are both bug fixes and new features. But this was largely true 'back in the good ole days', which you are longing for. It is also true of other 'for profit' companies. 4) Yes, I lament w/ you the loss of the earlier book-type license models. It is your second sentence that I think is not only unfair, but also untrue. However, I also agree w/ your 3rd sentence, so I guess we're in 66% agreement. :-) Competition is good. Let the market place decide. But let it decide based on a true understanding of the facts.

then go here. You can't beat Borland.

Then again, .NET and web services are destined to become the next great niche, but that's another story.

Borland has something that should be an exciting alternative. It is portable, meaning that if you buy both Borland Delphi and Borland Kylix, you can compile the same code for both Windows and Linux platforms.

I can't say for sure that it supports all the features that was mentioned, (since I haven't had the need to use all those features,) but I've seen a lot of them in use. As far as design is concerned, Delphi rocks. You can check out Borland Delphi here, and Borland Kylix here. Personal editions are available for free.

Borland has something that should be an exciting alternative. It is portable, meaning that if you buy both Borland Delphi and Borland Kylix, you can compile the same code for both Windows and Linux platforms.

I can't say for sure that it supports all the features that was mentioned, (since I haven't had the need to use all those features,) but I've seen a lot of them in use. As far as design is concerned, Delphi rocks. You can check out Borland Delphi here, and Borland Kylix here. Personal editions are available for free.

A couple other languages/environments you may wish to look at are:

• Delphi 6/Kylix (Object Pascal)
• Perl 5 with ActiveState's IDE

I don't have much experience with Delphi 6/Kylix or Object Pascal, but Perl 5 will handle most of your requirements.

Personally, I would go back to your boss and ask why he needs all these features. The list of requirements sounds more like a buzzword-compliant list of programming language features that a typical PHB would come up with than a real requirements list. For example, if a design document hasn't been created, it's likely that this list of requirements is bogus.

NOTE: I found Cliff's question appended to the end of this story very confusing. It's orthogonal to the original question, at best. At worst, it's going to cause two entirely separate topics of discussion which will be difficult to distinguish when reading comments.

Microsoft is taking a lot of well-deserved flack because they're trying to defend indefensible terms in their EULA. They should learn from Borland:

When Borland had an unacceptable EULA in Kylix, they quickly backed down and posted a promise to change the EULA.

Then they didn't bother to do anything, and the problem was forgotten.

Ok, here's my facts.

Anders Hejlsberg won the 2001 Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award. Quote: "Hejlsberg is best known as author of Borland's Turbo Pascal"

Anders Hejlsberg wrote the Pascal compiler core. Quote: "Borland licensed the Pascal compiler core, written by Anders Hejlsberg (Poly Data was the name of his company in Denmark), and added the user interface and editor."

And, "Anders Hejlsberg is famous in the programming world for creating the Turbo Pascal compiler and leading the team that designed Delphi."

Your turn.

It may be called a different thing, but C++ Builder and Delphi have done this for years. I am including a selection from the February 26, 1997 white paper on C++ Builder tilted, "C++Builder, 1, Borland C++Builder White Paper: Application Development with C++Builder and Delphi" (under the heading "Some Theory on Linking Object Pascal and C++Builder Code"):

"A good way to begin your exploration of this issue is to understand that Delphi, and Borland C++ 5.0 use the same 32-bit compiler. The difference is simply in how the language is parsed. Delphi parses Object Pascal, tokenizes it, and then passes it on to the compiler. Borland C++ 5.0 parses C++, tokenizes it, and then passes it on to the compiler. Underneath the hood, Delphi 2.0, C++ Builder and Borland C++ are very similar tools. The difference is in how the syntax of the language looks before it is parsed and tokenized.

Delphi finishes its compile and link cycles faster than Borland C++ simply because Pascal is easier to parse, and because Delphi supports a simpler, and more flexible type of binary file (DCUs are easier to make than OBJs.)

Since C++Builder uses the same compiler as Delphi, the road is obviously at least half way open to finding compatibility between Delphi and C++. The next stone on the path is laid by C++Builder's advantageous use of the Delphi VCL."

The above section demonstrates that Delphi and C++ Builder use a type of common language. Once the Delphi code and C++ Builder code have been parsed and tokenized, they get passed to the same compiler. Microsoft took this idea, and combined it with the virtual machine concept (most recently used in Java) to get the CIL idea.
You said they don't use an intermediate language of any kind, but as you should be able to see from the above text, they actually do. The difference is Borland kept this idea in the background. They just focused marketing the idea that two development environments work well together.
The code name for C++ Builder was Sci-Fi as stated by Brian Long, who used to work for Borland UK. According to an opinion section in his article for The Delphi Magazine, C++ Builder was already being planned during Delphi's original development. He also makes a comment as to why the project was called Sci-Fi, but I will let you look those up because they are irrelevant to my point here. To me at least, it becomes obvious that they wanted some common point for both languages. They paths may have varied some since then, but I would guess that they still use the same compiler. No, they don't have an interpreter, but interpreters were not that popular until Java came along and brought interpreters back into the spotlight.
Very rarely does Microsoft actual create new idea. They tend to rehash old ideas with a new twist, and then they call it their own.

This has been around since 3.1 and is a very good tutorial.

1. No only was the book expensive, but it didn't include a disk with the source code. You had to write away to CP himself to get that, and it wasn't cheap either.
2. In keeping with the design philosophy of Windows, CP has a "complexity is power, power is complexity" philosophy. This is reflected both in his programming style, and in his prose.
3. I expended considerable mental energy on the chapter on memory management -- which left me fairly angry when I read the very last paragraph. This explained that the preceding text (unchanged from the previous edition) was only useful if you planned to write real-mode or protected-mode programs. No sane programmer does these things -- that's why 3.0 was the first version anybody took seriously.

If you just need to hack out some quick GUI application, you should use an IDE environment that supports this. Some good ones are available free. If your stay in Windowsville is short and involuntary, you might consider a Java IDE, so at least you'll pick up some skills that you can take back to the Unix world. Or if you neeed native code, you might consider Delphi. Strangely enough, Delphi is quite popular amongst low-level Windows API hackers. This does seem strange, given that Delphi uses a dialect of Pascal, and Windows is very C-centric. But a lot of people feel that Delphi's advantages offset this semantic impedence gap.

This has been around since 3.1 and is a very good tutorial.

1. No only was the book expensive, but it didn't include a disk with the source code. You had to write away to CP himself to get that, and it wasn't cheap either.
2. In keeping with the design philosophy of Windows, CP has a "complexity is power, power is complexity" philosophy. This is reflected both in his programming style, and in his prose.
3. I expended considerable mental energy on the chapter on memory management -- which left me fairly angry when I read the very last paragraph. This explained that the preceding text (unchanged from the previous edition) was only useful if you planned to write real-mode or protected-mode programs. No sane programmer does these things -- that's why 3.0 was the first version anybody took seriously.

If you just need to hack out some quick GUI application, you should use an IDE environment that supports this. Some good ones are available free. If your stay in Windowsville is short and involuntary, you might consider a Java IDE, so at least you'll pick up some skills that you can take back to the Unix world. Or if you neeed native code, you might consider Delphi. Strangely enough, Delphi is quite popular amongst low-level Windows API hackers. This does seem strange, given that Delphi uses a dialect of Pascal, and Windows is very C-centric. But a lot of people feel that Delphi's advantages offset this semantic impedence gap.

How many people actually use Borland's C++ products currently? Of those that do, is this just brand loyalty from the Windows 3.1 days? I've been part of product teams (all using C/C++) developing on Windows, Mac, and various unices, and I've never seen Borland being used anywhere. The last Borland product I've seen used was Turbo Pascal for DOS back in high school.

Not even close to true. A lot of developers are absolutely passionate about Delphi and C++ Builder. I think they'd riot in the streets if either product were discontinued. Not that there's any danger of this. Even in Borland's darkest days, these products were making money, and never stopped being under active development.

There are lots of reasons for this lack of visibility. The most obvious one is the reluctance of managers to commit to non-Microsoft tools, despite rabid lobbying from their engineers. And there always seem to be rumors of Borland's imminent meltdown -- even as we turn a profit and scramble to house the new hires.

One way to measure the penetration of Borland RAD products is to download and run the VCL Scanner, which uncovers installed Windows programs that use Borland libraries. First time I used it, I was shocked to discover how many of these there were. Some of them were basic system utilities that I had used for years.

Out of over 200 comments, so far, there have only been a couple of mentions of the license agreement fiasco. Why is this? Does the Slashdot community forget so soon? This was a really big thing less than 2 weeks ago, and now everyone's happy because Borland is releasing a C++ compiler for linux, hmmm. This seems hypocritical to me. Borland never really apologized for their EULA, they just excused it as a mistake made by their lawyers.See this. There enterprise agreement is not industry standard, it is ridiculous. I guess that it doesn't matter what a company does, as long as it's not Microsoft. It's hard to replace an OS, but not so hard to replace an app--I, personally, would use someting a little less polished, rather than support a company that claims to support a community, but, really, doesn't.
I'm really not trying to be a troll here, I just thought that this needed to be brought up, and, discussed.

I'm currently learning Java using their JBuilder6 Personal Edition, (a very good Java IDE, I might add). It's available for free on both Windows and Linux. Its got everything you need to learn Java, just not the enterprise stuff. So its possible they might do the same with C++ Builder. Its just in the past(for Windows) they made the base compiler free and charged you for the IDE.

The blurb (linked to here mentions that Borland is going to announce C++Builder for Linux. Just a tasty little tidbit that needs to be adressed:P

Besides KDE has Klipper, Windows has Clippy - nuff said

True, but last I heard Clippy was looking for a job.

Borland Delphi. I'll stick with the best Windows *and* Linux tool on the market. My small business and non-profit customers don't give a whit about what tools I use in my work.

.NET (+ C# & CLR), dead on arrival with CIOs, my consulting customers and smart developers everywhere. Besides, Borland beat them out the gate with web services, which is a good implementation to boot (as always with Borland development tools). And Java's slant on web services is ramping fast with the help of IBM and other players.

you couldn't legally use C++ Builder or Delphi/Kylix to write a database engine or an IDE

Makes me wonder what's going to become of Pocket Studio (a Palm compiler based upon and written, I believe, in Delphi) or the various Borland Database Engine alternatives written in Delphi. There are even alternatives to Borland's MIDAS.

Granted, Pocket Studio isn't a directly competitive product, but it all depends on how broadly you interpret the EULA and how tenacious a legal team you can afford. The BDE and MIDAS alternatives make no bones about their intent to cut into Borland's market, however.

http://www.borland.com

This post is officially a circumvention device, in violation of the DMCA, since I have made easily accessible the copyrighted content to a large audience against their "copy protection", with that hyperlink.

Now does everyone see the problem with legalese?

That is true, but it is very unfair to characterize it as abandoned. Mark Duncan of Borland R&D, and the main author and maintainer of CLX has been very responsive to bug reports in the Borland Newsgroups. He may not have done much over the holidays, but Borland has done a remarkable job of keeping FreeCLX updated.

M.

I have quite a bit of familiarity with JBuilder (I've been using it daily for about two years, primarily on Linux), further the information is readily available on Borland's JBuilder website in the "Features and Benefits" PDF document. To quote:

"The Borland JBuilder environment ships with the Java2 SDK 1.3 and is entirely implemented in Java for excellent platform interoperability and performance on Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS, and any operating system that fully supports the Java SDK 1.3."

Emphasis mine. You can apologise now. :-P

(It has been that way since JBuilder 4.)

Do us all a favor and check your facts before trying to "educate" people. JBuilder is not "100% pure Java" by any stretch of the imagination - not any more than my cup of Starbucks with cream is "100% pure Java".

Would you care for any salt with that crow? :-)

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

The first OOP system I ever used was Digitalk's Smalltalk V, a quite successful adaptation of the ur-OO language to DOS, and later to 16-bit Windows. I was impressed by its power and expressiveness -- and frustrated by the difficulty of dealing with the huge mass of new concepts. It would have been much easier if there were a clear distinction between things I needed to know in order to extend the framework, and things I needed to know in order to create applications.

Anyone interested in OOP should download one of the many Smalltalk implementations available just to play with it. But there's a limit to the serious work you can do. There are still Smalltalk developers out there, but most people just don't have the mindset.

Modern OOP systems are mainly extensions of procedural programming languages. This disgusts OOP purists, but makes for a more shallow learning curve, and helps sharpen the distinction between features for designing objects, and features for using them.

C++ is the fanciest of these. But it's extremely complex, and should be approched slowly, if at all. C++ enthusiasts never seem to tire of finding new and obscure idioms to invent.

There are lots of OOP languages out there, but I think two recommend themselves to the newbie -- especially the newbie who wants to actually makes things. There's Java, which no longer seems likely to change the world, but is still a dominant force in some applications.

And there's Object Pascal, which outsiders consider an antiquated curiousity, but which is considered a powerful and highly usable tool by its rabid fans. OP compiles very quickly, which makes it particularly useful for RAD tools.

Which brings me to the commercial: I help document the two big Object Pascal RAD tools, Delphi (Windows), and Kylix (Linux). Both are extremely accessible to the OOP newbie, while having all the power and expressiveness of a serious OOP system. And both have versions you can download for free.

Some people down the hall do a similar tool for Java. I hear its pretty good.

The first OOP system I ever used was Digitalk's Smalltalk V, a quite successful adaptation of the ur-OO language to DOS, and later to 16-bit Windows. I was impressed by its power and expressiveness -- and frustrated by the difficulty of dealing with the huge mass of new concepts. It would have been much easier if there were a clear distinction between things I needed to know in order to extend the framework, and things I needed to know in order to create applications.

Anyone interested in OOP should download one of the many Smalltalk implementations available just to play with it. But there's a limit to the serious work you can do. There are still Smalltalk developers out there, but most people just don't have the mindset.

Modern OOP systems are mainly extensions of procedural programming languages. This disgusts OOP purists, but makes for a more shallow learning curve, and helps sharpen the distinction between features for designing objects, and features for using them.

C++ is the fanciest of these. But it's extremely complex, and should be approched slowly, if at all. C++ enthusiasts never seem to tire of finding new and obscure idioms to invent.

There are lots of OOP languages out there, but I think two recommend themselves to the newbie -- especially the newbie who wants to actually makes things. There's Java, which no longer seems likely to change the world, but is still a dominant force in some applications.

And there's Object Pascal, which outsiders consider an antiquated curiousity, but which is considered a powerful and highly usable tool by its rabid fans. OP compiles very quickly, which makes it particularly useful for RAD tools.

Which brings me to the commercial: I help document the two big Object Pascal RAD tools, Delphi (Windows), and Kylix (Linux). Both are extremely accessible to the OOP newbie, while having all the power and expressiveness of a serious OOP system. And both have versions you can download for free.

Some people down the hall do a similar tool for Java. I hear its pretty good.

The first OOP system I ever used was Digitalk's Smalltalk V, a quite successful adaptation of the ur-OO language to DOS, and later to 16-bit Windows. I was impressed by its power and expressiveness -- and frustrated by the difficulty of dealing with the huge mass of new concepts. It would have been much easier if there were a clear distinction between things I needed to know in order to extend the framework, and things I needed to know in order to create applications.

Anyone interested in OOP should download one of the many Smalltalk implementations available just to play with it. But there's a limit to the serious work you can do. There are still Smalltalk developers out there, but most people just don't have the mindset.

Modern OOP systems are mainly extensions of procedural programming languages. This disgusts OOP purists, but makes for a more shallow learning curve, and helps sharpen the distinction between features for designing objects, and features for using them.

C++ is the fanciest of these. But it's extremely complex, and should be approched slowly, if at all. C++ enthusiasts never seem to tire of finding new and obscure idioms to invent.

There are lots of OOP languages out there, but I think two recommend themselves to the newbie -- especially the newbie who wants to actually makes things. There's Java, which no longer seems likely to change the world, but is still a dominant force in some applications.

And there's Object Pascal, which outsiders consider an antiquated curiousity, but which is considered a powerful and highly usable tool by its rabid fans. OP compiles very quickly, which makes it particularly useful for RAD tools.

Which brings me to the commercial: I help document the two big Object Pascal RAD tools, Delphi (Windows), and Kylix (Linux). Both are extremely accessible to the OOP newbie, while having all the power and expressiveness of a serious OOP system. And both have versions you can download for free.

Some people down the hall do a similar tool for Java. I hear its pretty good.

Just IBM throws a billion dollars to the Linux camp in 2001. Assuming they followed through...

The server market continues to improve for Linux with marketshare increasing every quarter, with only MS barely keeping up, and others falling behind. Desktop is harder to judge, but it continues to show progress. Desktops are maturing and stabilizing, as are fantastic development tools like Borland's Kylix rapid application development environment. More apps will follow.

It is going to be a great year for Linux fans!

My motivation is that I work for Borland. ActiveX isn't my area, but there's a certain feeling (not only by people who work here!) that our support for ActiveX is better than MS's.

A lot of people prefer Delphi (which uses an OO variant of Pascal in place of VB's pseudo-OO BASIC) because Delphi produces smaller, faster, and more reliable object files. The differences in syntax take some getting use to, but people who have used both much prefer Delphi for creating ActiveX components. It probably makes a big difference that component architecture is an afterthought in MS's toolset, but a basic part of the Delphi design.

Then for C++ diehards, there's C++Builder, which co-exists with Delphi a lot better than Visual C++ co-exists with VB. And there are those who think it supports ActiveX, MFC, and ATL better than VC does. Most of all, C++Builder treats ActiveX components as components, not some weird entity you have to kludge into your app.

Perhaps I can make up for such shameless spamming by suggesting that your real problem is a resistence to component-based programming. This is a powerful programming model, and VB's success is based on its semi-support for it. Perhaps converting your existing code base to this model would improve productivity enough to pay for the conversion.

My motivation is that I work for Borland. ActiveX isn't my area, but there's a certain feeling (not only by people who work here!) that our support for ActiveX is better than MS's.

A lot of people prefer Delphi (which uses an OO variant of Pascal in place of VB's pseudo-OO BASIC) because Delphi produces smaller, faster, and more reliable object files. The differences in syntax take some getting use to, but people who have used both much prefer Delphi for creating ActiveX components. It probably makes a big difference that component architecture is an afterthought in MS's toolset, but a basic part of the Delphi design.

Then for C++ diehards, there's C++Builder, which co-exists with Delphi a lot better than Visual C++ co-exists with VB. And there are those who think it supports ActiveX, MFC, and ATL better than VC does. Most of all, C++Builder treats ActiveX components as components, not some weird entity you have to kludge into your app.

Perhaps I can make up for such shameless spamming by suggesting that your real problem is a resistence to component-based programming. This is a powerful programming model, and VB's success is based on its semi-support for it. Perhaps converting your existing code base to this model would improve productivity enough to pay for the conversion.

first off, it works really well for development. you can run any of the all java IDEs like netbeans or forte from sun or even borland's jbuilder
i've been using jbuilder4 for a while. i had a bit of a hack getting the linux version to install, but once i did, its all straight up java 2 code, so it ran fine. (i prefer jbuilder4 since its got the ability to load in the vi editor tool from sourceforge - jvi.sourceforge.net i've got tomcat 3.2.1 and 4.0 running fine on my pb, and it all works like a champ.

i've found that the java integration into osX is outstanding. apple has made it one of the languages to code full on applications for osX with. i've got a coworker who does use the apple IDE projectBuilder to do his java development, so i know its possible. i just havent done it. i use jbuilder on NT at work, so i wanted to keep the same project files.

But what I'd also like to see is older versions being made free (as in beer) after a specfied time.

I agree with you here. I love Borland for releasing their old Turbo C and Pascal environments.

But with some software, such as the anti-virus software mentioned in the article, the old versions aren't really useful. If they released the source maybe, but that's pretty unlikely.

Interbase has excellent blob support. Borland markets it as an "embedded" database, but in the real world it's used at all scales, including servers that do stock market transactions. The open source version has an active community, including a lot of people who helped create the original closed-source product.

You should actually recommend the one from Borland. It has the best CMP, IIOP and security support I have seen so far.