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ripped straight from Delphi's object pascal I would guess

Given that Microsoft hired away Borland's chief Delphi (and object pascal) architect, Anders Hejlsberg, and that Anders' name is on the C# language specification, this should come as no surprise. :)

Naturally, Borland has been attempting to sue Microsoft for its systematic destruction of their company by recruiting all of their top people (mostly on the technical front).

Delphi is a great environment. You can even download a demo from www.borland.com.

If you read the Kylix FAQ you will notice that as long as you stick to the CLX-libraries there is 100% portability between Kylix and Delphi 6.

I haven't tried Kylix myself and I haven't looked to much into the CLX-libraries but I do know that Borland usually don't lie to you about stuff like this.

"Shoot some fish!" - Happyworm.

TogetherSoft Together Control Center

One thing immediately noticeable about Together is that it includes a modeling tool, which is why it is often compared to Rational Rose. But while Rose (as far as I understand) is ONLY a modeling tool, Together is also a development/deployment environment, including a code editor, debugger, and--perhaps most useful--the brains to do J2EE application assembly and deployment, i.e. WAR and EAR files. This means that you can describe your EJBs--for example, using various dialogs to map entity beans to tables--and Together will write the deployment descriptors for you. This is especially useful for CMP entity beans, the deployment descriptors for which can get pretty hairy! Support is included for a number of applications servers, from JBoss to WebLogic 6.1. Another nice thing about Together is that it has a source code formatter built in: press a hotkey combination and it will format your source according to rules which you define. Yes, there are standalone tools that do this, but having it built in is pretty slick.

Together does have a few drawbacks: it doesn't support graphical Swing layout like a tool such as JBuilder, but if you're doing server-side development anyway, this isn't such a big deal. I also don't believe it helps out with JSP development either, although again for my purposes I don't see this as a big deal.

Borland JBuilder Enterprise
My other favorite--perhaps because I worked for Borland for two years--is JBuilder Enterprise. While it doesn't include the design tools of Together, it's a good all-around IDE nonetheless. One of its strong points is its Swing layout tool, which is the best I've seen (although lately I haven't kept up very well with the capabilities of other products). There's also a JSP editor/debugger, which I haven't used extensively. JBuilder 5 adds EAR assembly and deployment, although I believe it has support only for Borland AppServer and WebLogic (they may have added a couple more application servers).

An Alternative: IntelliJ IDEA
Both Together Control Center and JBuilder Enterprise are full-featured IDEs (Together is actually a design tool/IDE). If you don't need all the J2EE bells and whistles, or the Swing layout tools, and are just looking for a solid programmer's editor, I've heard great things about IntelliJ IDEA. In particular, Martin Fowler (of Refactoring fame, among other things) swears by it. It does have a number of good refactoring tools in it.

Conclusion
All of these are good tools with various strengths, weaknesses, and price tags. I believe all of them offer an evaluation version, and I believe Borland and TogetherSoft still offer basic versions for free (as in beer). Any one is worth a look.

Cheers,
Jeremy

IMO, I think it's important to be comfortable with more than one "type" of IDE when writing Java code. The sophisticated Java IDE's are often very slow to startup, especially if they are written in Java itself (e.g. JBuilder, Forte take upwards of 20 seconds to startup on my machine sometimes - JDK1.3, 512 MB, 400 MHz) which can be a pain in the arse for impulse coding or quick changes to code when the IDE is not running.

Therefore I've found it helpful to have two IDE's I'm comfortable with:

1) A stripped down, quick and dirty text editor which allows you to get in and out of files quick (e.g. notepad, ultraedit under Windows, whatever)

2) A whizz bang do everything for you IDE which provides a huge amount of features (Wizards, code management, plugins) like JBuilder, IBM VisualAge for Java, Forte, Oracle JDeveloper etc etc

See the following links for full lists of Java IDEs out there:

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/tools/jw-tools- ide.html

http://www.webdeveloper.com/java/java_ides.html

Personally I've used about 10-15 editors tailored for Java and enjoy using Borland JBuilder5 (Enterprise) at the moment for the following reasons:

Wizards for just about any Java component you would want to create - Servlets/JSPs/EJBs/CORBA/Javabeans/XML. This avoids writing a lot of tedious code.

The ability to code all parts of a Java web app. with proper syntax highlighting, and code completion etc. in the one IDE (HTML, Servlets, JSPs, EJBs). The ability to preview the web. app. in the IDE without starting up the app. server. etc, can be helpful (JBuilder comes bundled with Tomcat (and Cocoon), supports Websphere, Weblogic, Borland Appserver and other plugins).

Code completion and insight - Java has lotsOfLongMethodNamesWhichAreSometimesABitTooDescr iptive and a pain to type

Rapid GUI prototyping (null, XYLayout) for Swing clients (if anyone still builds Swing clients, just joking ;-))

XML support, Cocoon, XML to DTD, DTD to XML, XSLT transformation previews. You'll may need something like XmlSpy for more sophisticated XML development however.

Full customisation of pretty much any part of the IDE, keymappings, toolbars etc - I like to use my own keymappings.

Having all parts of a Java component (e.g. methods, attributes) accessible by clicking on its name in a GUI IDE panel - this can be nice to locate sections of code when a Java class becomes large.

I could go on and on, the full feature matrix is here. Of course JBuilder Enterprise costs a *lot of money* and I probably would'nt buy it for home use.

One problem, I refuse to work on JBuilder with less than 512MB RAM. It's written entirely in Java and although they do a great job to make it as fast as it is (using custom class loaders I've read somewhere), stuff like code insight and code completion is painful with anything less than 512MB RAM.

IMO, I think it's important to be comfortable with more than one "type" of IDE when writing Java code. The sophisticated Java IDE's are often very slow to startup, especially if they are written in Java itself (e.g. JBuilder, Forte take upwards of 20 seconds to startup on my machine sometimes - JDK1.3, 512 MB, 400 MHz) which can be a pain in the arse for impulse coding or quick changes to code when the IDE is not running.

Therefore I've found it helpful to have two IDE's I'm comfortable with:

1) A stripped down, quick and dirty text editor which allows you to get in and out of files quick (e.g. notepad, ultraedit under Windows, whatever)

2) A whizz bang do everything for you IDE which provides a huge amount of features (Wizards, code management, plugins) like JBuilder, IBM VisualAge for Java, Forte, Oracle JDeveloper etc etc

See the following links for full lists of Java IDEs out there:

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/tools/jw-tools- ide.html

http://www.webdeveloper.com/java/java_ides.html

Personally I've used about 10-15 editors tailored for Java and enjoy using Borland JBuilder5 (Enterprise) at the moment for the following reasons:

Wizards for just about any Java component you would want to create - Servlets/JSPs/EJBs/CORBA/Javabeans/XML. This avoids writing a lot of tedious code.

The ability to code all parts of a Java web app. with proper syntax highlighting, and code completion etc. in the one IDE (HTML, Servlets, JSPs, EJBs). The ability to preview the web. app. in the IDE without starting up the app. server. etc, can be helpful (JBuilder comes bundled with Tomcat (and Cocoon), supports Websphere, Weblogic, Borland Appserver and other plugins).

Code completion and insight - Java has lotsOfLongMethodNamesWhichAreSometimesABitTooDescr iptive and a pain to type

Rapid GUI prototyping (null, XYLayout) for Swing clients (if anyone still builds Swing clients, just joking ;-))

XML support, Cocoon, XML to DTD, DTD to XML, XSLT transformation previews. You'll may need something like XmlSpy for more sophisticated XML development however.

Full customisation of pretty much any part of the IDE, keymappings, toolbars etc - I like to use my own keymappings.

Having all parts of a Java component (e.g. methods, attributes) accessible by clicking on its name in a GUI IDE panel - this can be nice to locate sections of code when a Java class becomes large.

I could go on and on, the full feature matrix is here. Of course JBuilder Enterprise costs a *lot of money* and I probably would'nt buy it for home use.

One problem, I refuse to work on JBuilder with less than 512MB RAM. It's written entirely in Java and although they do a great job to make it as fast as it is (using custom class loaders I've read somewhere), stuff like code insight and code completion is painful with anything less than 512MB RAM.

The editor is fast (it more than keeps up with my typing even though it's doing real-time syntax coloring, structure analysis, and so on). The compiler is fast and it has a good dependency checking system. I can do a typical incremental make in about 10-20 seconds, and a full rebuild takes 190 seconds). Creating a new project is instantaneous.

The debugger is brilliant! You may not think you need one (I survived wth System.out.println for years), but once you have it your productivity will skyrocket, trust me.

That's the thing that impresses me most about JBuilder -- the features are all focused directly on making you more productive. The ability to browse the all of your classes plus java.* and anything else you happen to have in your classpath live in the editor is worth its weight in Jolt cola any day.

It's a little spendy (around $900 for the Pro edition, I believe), but the only thing scarier than the price tag is the productivity you get.

I've used Symantec Visual Cafe and Metrowerks CodeWarrior a ton -- they both suck. I've also toyed with IBM's VisualAge for Java, which goes the "all your source are belong to us" route, and is unbelievably annoying to use with a source control system that isn't theirs. I've also used emacs and javac/jikes for some little projects.

IMO, JBuilder5 is miles ahead of everything else. CodeWarrior is a distant second and has a reasonably nice daily working environment (good editor), but it's dog slow compiling or building archives, and the debugger is worthless. Visual Cafe is probably third, and the rest all down the list somewhere from there.

If you're working on anything of any size, I'd go for JBuilder in a heartbeat. Get a demo (or find someone who can get you access to the QuickTime of the the 60 minute demo Borland's Blake Stone did at the 2001 Apple WWDC). When you see all it can do, it'll blow you away.

• Vim - Really, it's what I use.
• JEdit - Pure-Java, super pluggable IDE.
• NetBeans - The origninal pure-java IDE.
• Forte - Never used it... lots of people like it.
• JBuilder - Seems like a descent ide.

Like I said, though, I really *do* use vim, mc and ant. And that's it. jode if you need to do some decompiling, and everything is great under Linux.

It's been called "The Bronze Age IDE" by my colleagues, but it's fast and stable. Run a couple windows in each virtual desktop and you can edit 20 files at once easily. Vim has everything I want in an editor -- color syntax hilighting, auto-indenting, quickie macros, horizontal and vertical split, block copy and indent, etc. And ten million other little features.

No matter what IDE you use, ant is by far the best Java-based build system. Everyone should be using it.

-nate

• it's written in pure java, so can run on windows, linux, or solaris
• project files are stored in xml
• it has a good debugger
• i can link it to my source control system (perforce)
• i can use a vi keymapping with it
• it generates clean code (useful for me, because i build UIs)

• also written in pure java
• the UI is a lot slicker, and doesn't actually feel like a java application (at the cost of requiring a beefier system)
• it also has a good debugger, but i haven't used it extensively enough to compare with jbuilder
• the community edition, which is free, includes some enterprise features only available in jbuilder's much more expensive enterprise version (including remote debugging)
• built in CVS support (good if that's your source control system)
• also generates clean code, but doesn't let you edit it (which is good or bad, depending on your point of view)
• you have a choice between MDI or SDI (jbuilder is MDI only)

We use Borland's JBuilder at our startup company for the past year and a half and most everyone has been very happy with it. It's a pure Java environment and will work on Linux (I ran JBuild exclusively on a SuSE Linux-ified Dell laptop at my last job) and runs very quickly, unlike Netbeans from what I've seen. There's an API for creating add-ons to the IDE and people have created many free ones out there (that one has a few and one that was hosted on Angelfire had a lot but is gone now).
My favorite is jVi which changes the editor to act like VI/VIM. I think JBuilder comes with an emacs editor option out of the box (zip file) as well. There's also Clearcase opentool that I used for a while but I've found it too slow for my taste in the long run.
A lot of Developers here use EditPlus for editing XML, XSL and JSP and they can't say enough good things about it. Personally I love VIM, it's good for what ails ya.

review

free personnal version

Triple-Cross-Platform development - with new support for three leading application servers (Borland AppServer, WebLogic and WebSphere), three version control systems (ClearCase, Visual SourceSafe and CVS) and three development platforms (Windows, Linux and Solaris).

Bringing Java and XML together - take advantage of the latest technology for data exchange and presentation. JBuilder includes fully-integrated and comprehensive XML development support for the entire development cycle including creation, manipulation, transformation/presentation and integration.

Enhanced enterprise development and deployment to J2EE application servers - including new support for WebLogic 6, WebSphere and new Borland AppServer 4.5. Plus easily create enterprise deployment archives (EAR).

Improved team productivity - with new integration with three leading version control systems Rational ClearCase and Microsoft Visual SourceSafe.

I've tried several. Here's a rundown of what I've experienced. All of these have syntax highlighting, code completion, popup parameter help, can jump to the place a class or variable was defined. The all have a debugger.

Codeguide This was my first java IDE. I used it for a while. For a java IDE it's not so slow. Real-time compilation shows any code mistakes (it underlines them red), even stuff that others miss. Free evaluation version. Not terribly expensive. Relatively poor debugger. Nice autoindenting and code formatting. Virtually nonexistant CVS integration. Closed source.

JBuilder : Slow. Does a lot. Has excellent plugin support, so it can be extended a lot. Nice project management. The Enterprise version has excellent CVS integration. Has a visual editor if you do a lot of Swing programming. Fairly poor real-time error detecting. The best "enterprise" tools of these I mention. If you're doing j2ee stuff maybe you can use that stuff. Nice debugger. Library support for editing classpath is great. Autoindenting and code formatting a little weaker. Frustrating memory leak under linux has been plaguing it for years. There is a free version, closed source.

NetBeans SLOW. Reall, really slow. Has a ton of plugins. Ant integration is cool. Project management is a little hard to get used to. Etrememly flexible.I gave this one a real chance but the speed and bugs finally drove me away. Weak CVS integration. This is whas Sun's Forte is based on. (Think Mozilla/Netscape.) Open source.

Idea Excellent IDE. The refactoring support is 2nd to none in any IDE for any language I've ever seen. Code formatting is excellent, I've never seen so many options for how to format code. Code templates are cool. Library support is a little weaker than jbuilder and codeguide - that's one of its few weaknesses. Decent CVS integration. (Not as good as JBuilder, nothing I've seen is.) I code faster with this IDE than any I've used. UI to override methods, implement interfaces, move methods (and fix all the dependencies in your project), rename methods/classes. Lots more. Try it. Closed source.

We use Borland JBuilder around here, and I like it alot. Color coding editor, debugger, visual GUI designer, and database controls and classes are all built in. If you ever lusted after the RAD capabilities of Visual Basic, JBuilder has all that too.

Borland also has a free JBuilder personal (previously called Foundation), for tryout and personal use.

Be aware: software development in general, and Java software in general will each eat your computer for lunch. You're doing both, so make sure your machines are up to date.

-B

We use Borland JBuilder around here, and I like it alot. Color coding editor, debugger, visual GUI designer, and database controls and classes are all built in. If you ever lusted after the RAD capabilities of Visual Basic, JBuilder has all that too.

Borland also has a free JBuilder personal (previously called Foundation), for tryout and personal use.

Be aware: software development in general, and Java software in general will each eat your computer for lunch. You're doing both, so make sure your machines are up to date.

-B

As I sit here cursing JBuilder, I look forward to the end of the current project so I can try out IDEA

I've also used Codewarrior for Java, and have been pleasantly surprised. It's a top-notch environment. Metrowerks has done some fine work.

Forte/NetBeans has a way to go. What a pig. 3.0 has some nice speed and stability increases...

If you don't need a really fancy setup, try jEdit. It's an open source text editor with syntax coloring(60 file types!), and the plug-ins avaliable give you plenty of project management features.

And a dark horse: IntelliJ. I really like it. Lots of "enterprise" features bundled in a relatively cheap package.

If you don't want to go through the obnoxious survey, here's the download page: http://community.borland.com/cgi-bin/surveys/thanx .cgi?kylixopenedition_down (You'll still need a serial number/authorization key, though)

I just read the "what's new" page and I got e-buzz word whip lash...

They should put up some damn warnings or something.

i.e. : Build Web Services-enabled database middleware with DataSnap(TM) that scales and interoperates with your complete e-business solution...

Ok, now a serious question... is ANYONE out there using this? I've read the reviews, I read some tutorials, and my interest is sparked, but I want to here some testimony.

IMO, if you want to build a good UI in Java, you don't have to use IBM's stuff. Instead, use JBuilder by Borland, the personal version is free! And yes, it does run on different OSes.

Take a look at JDataStore from Borland. They claim it's inexpensive, and it's designed for exactly what you want.

look here

Good luck!

I don't know much about embedded DBs. I do know that Borland (for whom I work) sells Interbase, mainly as an embedded database. I have it running on my Linux box, and its footprint and maintenance needs are both quite small. It's a full-featured multi-threaded relational DB. Open Source, of course!

InterBase also has a very interesting transaction mechanism based on a multiversioning engine. One key benefit is that readers never block writers. You can process a long report of consistent (commited) data, without blocking data-entry applications.

Here is a description of this versioning system.

I must admit that I have no "real life" experience with this database. I don't know how fast or robust it is. Has anyone used it ?

Do you remember the GIF patent? Unisys actually did go after software users, not just developers.

The Access killer you're looking for on Linux is called Kylix. http://www.borland.com/kylix/ It does everything Access does except it doesn't crash randomly and it doesn't corrupt flat-file databases. There is more of a learning curve for Kylix - but once you're past the "Make a Recipe Program For Grandma" stage, Kylix is more logical and more organized

Real DBMS people will correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't MySQL's problem with multi-field keys a symptom of bad query optimization? As I understand it, MySQL is just a simple SQL interpreter running on top of a simple ISAM engine. What's missing? A query optimizer, which expedites data access in much the same way that a optimizing compiler expedites execution of native code.

Of course, you'll want to stick to open-source engines. But that still gives you plenty of choices. Have a look at Interbase, its Firebird variant (see IBPhoenix.com for Open Source efforts for both engines), and, of course, Postgres.

1. Write a library to make the code that is invalid in whatever Pascal compiler you want to use valid. (i.e. emulate missing built-in funcions)
I think that biggest problem that this person is facing is time, or the lack there of.

2. Automate translating code from one version to another. For instance, maybe the Sun Pascal has OO extensions, and you could automate translating the Sun object declarations to Objective Pascal (that's a language, right?) style declarations.
See above

3. There is surely a Free (or at least open) Pascal compiler that you could modify to compile the Sun style code.
I searched Sun's site for pascal, and this came up
Maybe it's something to look into, it is built for solaris 2.6, 7 for x86
Free Pascal
I couldn't find any info on here about Sun Pascal. Quite frankly I didn't even know it existed until I read this.

What about Kylix? It does object pascal, but who knows if it can read/compile Sun stuff.

It also seems that Pascal and C should translate almost exactly 1-1. There is a Pascal to C conversion script out there, you might be able to write a Sun Pascal to C conversion script faster than any of the other suggestions.
I *really* like this suggestion, it gets you out of vendor lock in and minimal time used.

Just how much of the code is sun specific? If it's not that much, then try and port, otherwise you seem to be SOL

It allows both the creation of command-line tools, as well as full-blown GUI applications. Borland also has a version of Delphi for Linux, called Kylix, and programs written using Delphi should port seamlessly to Kylix.

It allows both the creation of command-line tools, as well as full-blown GUI applications. Borland also has a version of Delphi for Linux, called Kylix, and programs written using Delphi should port seamlessly to Kylix.

er.. there are plenty of IDEs out there that make building GUIs simple. to name a few: Borland C++Builder, Microsoft Visual C++, Borland JBuilder, WebGain Visual Cafe.

funny, all the windows apps i use that were written with C++ look just fine to me too

In the same vein, making a GUI would be better suited to a GUI programming tool, with the backend being designed with real code.

ahh, i see. i better not tell my manager about all this fake code i've been using for my GUIs.

er.. there are plenty of IDEs out there that make building GUIs simple. to name a few: Borland C++Builder, Microsoft Visual C++, Borland JBuilder, WebGain Visual Cafe.

funny, all the windows apps i use that were written with C++ look just fine to me too

In the same vein, making a GUI would be better suited to a GUI programming tool, with the backend being designed with real code.

ahh, i see. i better not tell my manager about all this fake code i've been using for my GUIs.

Borland's free C++ compiler which is here. All the MS includes, Borland's VCL stuff... Very powerful commandline.

Seen what you get with Delphi (and Kylix for that matter)? There's the nice cute GUI, sure, but you still get commandline compilers, resource builders, linkers and so on as separate apps. You can, of course, pipe and so on...

This gives you the best of both worlds -- use the GUI when you want to design interfaces, ignore the gui and just stick to the commandline tools when you want automation.

Borland's C++Builder also has separate commandline tools (and pretty primitive grep and make...) (which, incidentally, are free for download but not quite Free).

Didn't get it? So go see QT or Kylix!

Netbeans

Sun Forte

Borland JBuilder

IBM Visual Age

No Visual Studio != No choices.

On the commercial side, KDE Studio Gold from the Kompany looks to be even better, and they also have Blackadder for Python and Ruby development if you need that. And language legends Borland are in the process of bringing over most of their modern packages including Delphi (confusingly renamed Kylix), Java and C++. Right now, Kylix is available, with C++ Builder and JBuilder coming in the next few months. Again, as long as you stay away from OS specific API calls (that does for Linux and Windows), you can reuse all objects and source with a simple recompile aimed at either Windows or Linux.

--
Evan

the people responsible for the IDE on windows (Microsoft v..no realy its a text editor..isual is a responce to them)

have released Borland's Kylix which happens to be very nice if your a pascal/delphi man and want cross dev

regards

john jones

p.s. I put in a few to many BR in the last tinking plain text did not do tags (-;

the people responsible for the IDE on windows (Microsoft v..no realy its a text editor..isual is a responce to them)

have released Borland's Kylix which happens to be very nice if your a pascal/delphi man and want cross dev

regards

john jones

p.s. I put in a few to many BR in the last tinking plain text did not do tags (-;

...what's an "ISV"?

Anyway, ignoring that question, as far as Integrated Development Environments go, do they really get any better than Borland's Kylix?

...what's an "ISV"?

Anyway, ignoring that question, as far as Integrated Development Environments go, do they really get any better than Borland's Kylix?

How does the proprietary Borland No-Nonsense License agreement affect my distribution?

The Borland No-Nonsense License is a proprietary license agreement granting a developer the right to distribute an application royalty-free, with or without source code, under any license agreement the developer chooses and has the right to use.

The Kylix Desktop Developer Edition and Kylix Server Developer Edition both ship with dual-licensed CLX libraries. The dual-licensed CLX gives a developer the flexibility to choose which license they wish to adopt for their project needs. Kylix Open Edition ships only the GPL-licensed CLX libraries and does not grant a developer the option of distributing an application under any other license terms.

have a day,

-l

• My friend is using it, and he's happy with it.
• My ISP only has MySQL support, so it's the only way to go.
• Even Slashdot is using it!
• It's the most popular DBMS, so it must be the best, right?
• Everyone and my neighbour is using it, so it's easy to get support.

A lot of people learn/learned Pascal as their first language. It's popular in teaching environments. If you are just starting out coding for Linux, and Pascal is what you know, then Borland's Kylix will let you write programs for Linux.

There is talk of a free (beer) kylix command-line compiler dowload, and the desktop edition is $100- for students, $200- for non-students. Kylix is easy to use. It won't take over from C/C++ but for a lot of people it could be a great way to get them started coding under Linux.

Not to be nitpicky, but you mention providing marketable skills & performance isn't the issue. If Java is a slow performer, wouldn't it tend to hurt students more learning a language that is slow, and klunky? Last I checked, there were plenty of jobs available for C & C++ programmers. I have a feeling that Java may be a fad, and C/C++ will be around and fall back in favor unless Java really takes off.

Java lets you do some cool stuff, and it lets you do some really klunky stuff, but it isn't designed for performance. Any industry that is CPU bound (Simulation, number crunching, gaming, local applications, etc.) needs to be coded to run fast. Industries that are network bound (ISP's, ASP's, Portals, etc.) don't really care about how much the CPU is choking because the network is the bottleneck. I have a feeling, once the network is no longer the bottleneck, Java either better get fast quick, or it's going to be going back to C/C++ for speed.

1. Java's not slow and klunky. I don't know when the last time you looked at Java was (it must have been years ago), but it is fast and getting faster. There are some optimization tricks you can do to code at runtime that can't work with a static compiler.
2. C++ lets you do some really klunky stuff, too - more, I would argue. There's no cure for incompetent programming.
3. Java isn't just taking off, it's already taken off. The base of Java developers and companies using Java for enterprise-critical applications is growing in direct proportion to C++'s falloff rate. Java isn't a fad, it's the language of the future. You can bury your head in the sand all you want, but that's the way it is. I'm sure lots of COBOL programmers thought C was just a fad, too.
4. Java's making huge inroads in graphics performance and I/O speed, which is where it's always been slowest, especially in the upcoming Merlin release (J2SE 1.4). I won't pretend that you could write Quake III in Java yet, but you could probably write Quake I. Computation speed has never really been the problem. After all, even Fortran has great number-crunching capability, but nobody would use it for serious enterprise-type applications.
5. Java's great strengths are binary portability, syntactic simplicity, and standard, supported APIs for everything under the sun. C++ doesn't even have an ABI standard that everyone plays with yet, let alone standard networking, graphics, and GUI libraries. Any industry that doesn't want portable, maintainable, extensible code is better off out of business.

Obligatory flamebait disclaimer: I don't think C and C++ are going away, or that Java is the One True Language. However, it is ridiculous to assert that Java is slow, poorly adopted, or unsuited to real-world applications in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Very serious companies like Oracle, Sybase, IBM, Macromedia/Allaire, Borland and of course Sun, are banking lots of money on Java's success, recognizing that it's a mature, robust, stable, fast language for very serious development.

I still recommend starting first term in Pascal. By the end of my first term I was comfortable programming loops, ifs, multi-dimensional arrays, and had seen pointers and recursion.

For kicks a while back I took a compressed 6 week first term java course....Week 3 we started writing code. We did loops and if statments in the same class. Can we say if loops for people who have never programmed? The first three weeks all we did was call library routines. No wonder the new programmers are confused. Believe it or not those integrated enviroments like Visual Studio and Delphi have are pretty overwhelming if you have never used a computer or programmed before. ( Do you give your kid a nail gun or a hammer and some nails when they are just learning? )

Pascal gave me a solid background to start from. Since then I have easily picked up Modula-2 and C. Which is where Delphi would come in at second term. It's OOP and allows RAD with the bonus of you already know the base language. Perfect for all those little 2nd term labs. And look, you still have time to touch on recursion, pointers, trees and other data structures and algorithms.

Once you know the fundementals of programming you can pick up other languages more quickly.

Delphi isn't portable
Okay this is mostly true. Kylix is now available for Linux. But how portable is the MFC? or Java? really? Not all Java VM are the same.

Delphi and Pascal have those evil pointers
What and Java doesn't? Check your error messages! At least they are fairly safe Pascal. So now if you learn Java as your primary, first language you are going to have a hell time with C/C++ pointer. And there is a lot of that code around. How do you think OOP works without pointers?

Yes, Delphi does

Web Services with XML Technologies

Web Application Design Platform

Web-Service Enabled Database Middleware

High Performance Native Windows Applications

Rapid Application Development (RAD) IDE

RADical Visual Development

Database development for any application

COM / ActiveX / COM+ Features

OpenGL

Just my take on things after watching my husband teach pascal -> modula-2 -> C -> C++ -> Java.
His favorite argument against Java is
How do you explain public static void main(String[] args) at the beginning of first term?

As an experienced C/C++ programmer, I suppose I have a fairly large slant on the issue. I think the phrases bring up the question of which language is most useful in the programmer world. I recently started dealing with Java because my work required me to write an application extention for their web database software. This only supports Java as a plugin language because it is a cross platform database platform. From my experiences with Java, it has a few problems. Java for has too many functions that are prebuilt. It becomes difficult to choose, just for things as simple as console io and file io. Also, the appropriateness of OO being used all the time is questionable. There are times when it's appropriate and can save lots of time and work (applets are a good example of this), but in many cases thing should be traditional code. Java also has some nice things about it. When C++ is the introductory language, GUI cannot be taught. If GUI is taught, the course is not proper because an introductory course should only deal with built-in language constructs such as file io, memory and algorithms. It would be nice nice for people to learn GUI programming in an introductory course because it is often hard for beginning programmers to grasp the importance of what they are doing when it looks like something from the early '80s, but is that what's important? However, I think C++ should remain the introductory language because of one main reason: professional programming. When a programmer is out in the work force, full blown Java apps don't exist for the most part. "Killer" Java apps are simply too slow. For an example try out JBuilder foundation (Forte for Java is not as guilty, but it's still not great). Java seems to offer no distinct advantages over C++ except for the GUI ability which is unimportant in an introductory course.

Whatever happened to BASIC for introductory programming?

This press release (under "Pricing and Availability") points out that Klyx will be available for a free download for anyone developing open-source or free software "mid 2001". But you make no mention of it.. has the situation changed? Or can I still chant "Go Borland" under my breath when I think about the role the Big Boys play in open source?
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Pricing and Availability
Kylix is available in three versions: Server Developer for professional and corporate Apache Web developers for $1999, Desktop Developer for professional application developers for $999, and Open Edition for open source and free software (GPL) development only will be available for free download or for purchase at $99 (with hardcopy documentation and CD). Kylix Server Developer and Kylix Desktop Developer will be generally available before the end of the first quarter 2001. Kylix Open Edition will be available by mid-2001. For more information about Kylix, please visit the Borland Web site, http://www.borland.com/kylix.

Cross-platform, IDE that runs on Linux (and anywhere else Java runs), go with Java and Borland JBuilder. I've been using JBuilder 4 for some time, and 5 is out but I've not had a chance to try it. It's a free download. Also you could try Forte from Sun. It's pretty cool but you need a lot of horsepower to get the most benefit out of it.

Finally, learn to program without an IDE. Seriously. A text editor, a copy of the Ant Build Tool and you're good to go.