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1. What revision control software are you using?
2. What system do you use for tracking bugs?
3. Are you familiar with Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)? If so, what level certification have you achieved?

If they respond to #1 with a blank stare or "huh?" I'd advise running for the door. If they are not using any kind of revision control software, and don't know what it is, the place is very poorly managed and will cause you some serious nightmares. All of the places where I've worked, which didn't use revision control, went out of business within a couple years.

Personally, I prefer Subversion, and I converted my prior employer to using it. They didn't understand why I wanted to use it, but they weren't averse to trying something new. After it saved our butts a couple times, they understood perfectly well why I wanted to use it and continue to use it after I left.

The job before that, I used StarTeam. Borland bought StarBase (the maker of StarTeam) while I was with that employer.

My current employer uses CVS. It has its warts, but it works.

For question #2, my current employer uses Bugzilla. It works reasonably well. My prior employer didn't have a bug-tracking system. The second or third web app they had me write was a bug-tracking system, not oriented toward software development but toward the larger company (hospitality). We ended up using a wiki for bug-tracking. StarTeam had a "Change Control" system built into it, so that employer had excellent bug-tracking software.

I've had only one employer who knew what CMMI was (question #3). They could've passed a level 3 certification if necessary. If you're going to develop for the DoD, you used to need a level 4 cert; not sure if that's the case any more.

For those who don't know, CMMI is merely a methodology for ensuring that:

• coding standards are in place
• development documentation is in place
• the project is well-managed on, time, responsibilities and risks
• there is a reasonable probability of delivering on-time

It can be tedious, consistent, or both. The better places are the latter, not so much the former.

In short, they should have good, solid answers for #1 and #2, while #3 is a nice-to-have.

Start getting everyone you know to start leaning on the folks at CodeWorks to get Delphi & C++ Builder ported over to Linux. Say what you will about Borland, but imagine those 3 tools being completely X-Platform between Win32, Linux ( Gnome & KDE ) and OS-X. That alone would put a very LARGE dent in Visual Studio.

Some people aren't bothered at all about this. Fine.

Of those who are bothered, many are considering moving to PostgreSQL. That's not a dumb move to make. But for those still in limbo or teetering on some fence, I think this is a good time to mention an alternative, Firebird, FKA Interbase. Interbase/Firebird is an industrial-strength, standards-compliant, highly performing DB, and was way ahead of its time back in the day. I heard that Oracle just recently copied its update versioning mechanism. Interbase failed in the market solely due to Borland's incompetent marketing.

One of its big pluses is the low maintenance - the DB reorganizes itself periodically and can run indefinitely without losing performance so long as it doesn't run out of space.

No, I'm not affiliated with Interbase or Firebird in any way, just a happy user who would like to see the product get some more exposure.

6 of our 10 BSA member products (id est: the non-free ones) were Windows (XP Pro and 2000). I cannot find any terms in the EULA (Note: this is the terms for Genuine Advantage, but most MS EULAs are essentially the same) where I agree to perform inventorying on the system at my own cost and expense to be made available at their request. I cannot locate a Mac OS X EULA, but I don't remember that in there either. The other two were an ancient (1996) VB compiler (Which is still MS and is probably an even more primitive version of linked one), and Delphi EULA (pdf) which states they have the right to terminate the license if we breach any of the conditions, but does not say that we at our own expense must perform the work necessary to prove we aren't in violation of these terms.

I frequently do read license agreements (exclusions are GPL, LGPL, BSD, Apache, or others that I am quite sure what the terms are as I have already read them). I have never agreed to pay to be somebody's lackey.

Excellent advice. It also bears mentioning that PageHeap will work when debugging programs written in languages other than C++. From the knowledgebase article:

Pageheap.exe is effective when used to verify any memory allocation process, including C++ style allocations new and delete, as long as the custom allocation/free functions eventually call into NT heap management interfaces (that is, RtlAllocateHeap, RtlFreeHeap).

(Emphasis mine.) For example, here's a bug report for something written in Delphi that crashes under pageheap.

Also, don't be tempted to use any of the following functions: IsBadWritePtr, IsBadHugeWritePtr, IsBadReadPtr, IsBadHugeReadPtr, IsBadCodePtr, IsBadStringPtr. Their use within Microsoft is deprecated as per MS's Secure Development Lifecycle. (Microsoft's resident security guru Michael Howard calls the *ReadPtr functions "CrashMyApplication" and the *WritePtr functions "CorruptMemoryAndCrashMySystem". :)

You can read about why these functions are bad on Larry Osterman's blog, and see more deprecated functions here.

The files are D6_Upd2_Pro.exe, D6_RTL2_Pro.exe if you have the Professional version, some other name than Pro if you have the Personal Edition. I have seen sites referencing both the Pro and Personal edition Upd2 and RTL2 patches, but all of the links to them are broken, and I am sorry I am not of more help.

This smells like a hidden advertisment for "Web Performance Inc.". Now somebody please tell me why I should trust the results produced by a relatively unknown product and company, and not stick to proven tools like Borland SilkPerformer or Mercury Loadrunner.

Borland's Delphi (Windows) and Kylix (Linux) is superior to Visual Studio/Visual C++ in most repects. They are full RAD systems with drag-and-drop interface builders and come with excellent compilers for both Object Pascal and C++. There are a large number of third-party component packages available for them. There is a free version of Kylix although they hide it pretty well on their web site. It is called "Open Edition" and you can get it here: http://www.borland.com/products/downloads/download _kylix.html. Visual Slickedit is a very sophisticated text editor which turns any set of command line tools into a graphic IDE. It does not have an visual interface builder, however. Available for both Windows and Linux but no free version. It is well worth the price if you are programming at the professional level. http://www.slickedit.com/ Mike

Borland's IDE business requires a distinct business model and focused investments different from our ALM business, which targets the broader software delivery organization.

Borland's IDE business requires a distinct business model and focused investments different from our ALM business, which targets the broader software delivery organization.

• Turbo Pascal v1.0
• Turbo Pascal v3.02
• Turbo Pascal v5.5
• Turbo C version 2.01
• Turbo C++ version 1.01

FWIW, I was a college freshman and my first programming class was "Programming Concepts Using Pascal". Rather than use the university's mini-computer (horrible edit and compile environment), I wanted something I could use on a PC. Other Pascal compilers at that time were prohibitively priced for a student at hundreds/thousands of dollars. A friend pointed me to Turbo Pascal and I bought my own copy at Egghead for under $90. My very first software purchase by the way. I was a loyal fan following the product line from TP3->TP4->TC1->TC2->TP5->TC++1->BC++2->BC++4->BC5+ +.

With every iteration, they got a little more expensive even for loyal customers. Then they brought out the "Professional" versions and wanted more money - so I stopped.

How does this relate? TP3 let me do everything and anything I wanted (no-nonsense license) at an expensive (for me) but reasonable price. For the hobbyist or beginner, they will get frustated very quickly with the limitations imposed by the free editions but balk at paying $500 for a professional license. Offer them the professional level software with a no-nonsense license for $99 and Borland may see things turn around.

The adventures of TurboMan? Just to confirm, we are talking about college students, not elementary school, right?

You can download the JBuilder Trial that degrades to the JBuilder Foundation Edition at the end of the trial period... which is essentially the same thing as a Turbo Java... Either way, I wouldn't be too surprised if they released a Turbo JBuilder in the coming months. Go here to download the trial.

Your comparison is based on system that ten years old. When I said "less powerful" I didn't mean "anemic". Aside from having any version of Office without a lot of virtual memory swapping. Hence your slowdown.

My comparison of Linux and Windows was not theoretical. I used to be a tech writer at Borland, and we were developing a Linux version of our Windows IDE, so I had two machines on my desk. I named them "Calvin" and "Hobbes". Calin was a 350 mhz Pentium III with 256 MB of RAM (wimpy by today's standards, but top of the line then), that I used for writing (standard authoring tool was Word) and for running our Windows IDEs. Hobbes was a 200 mhz Pentium II with 128 MB machine that I used to run the Linux IDE and a lot of other stuff. I used Hobbes to fiddle with all the different Linux desktops, play graphic-intensive games, and run some pretty powerful software. It actually performed better most of the time than its more powerful deskmate, which was always thrashing and crashing (hence the name).

I wouldn't even dare to run GNOME or your old Pentium I. You need more than that. But you don't need as much as you need for Windows XP, never mind Vista.

MS SQL Server is the only large scale database I know of that doesn't have a linux version. But that's hardly surprising since they don't seem to have any unix versions at all. (Hmmm... intriguing)

• http://www.sybase.com/linux
• http://www.borland.com/us/products/interbase/index .html

There are more than 2 unix databases commericially available.

Sadly, after downloading it and playing with it for the first time tonight, I'm gonna have to agree with this.

Executive summary: the documentation is utter garbage, the last release was more than a year ago, and it doesn't support Java 1.5.

To back it up: they take great pains to hide the forum from users of the site (hint: you have to go to the download page before you can find a link to it), and the documentation doesn't even cover such basic functionality as running in command line mode. The suggested fix to support Java 1.5 didn't work, and finally, the ant target is broken.

Other than the documentation jRat was probably pretty good a year or two ago when everything probably worked (judging from the screenshots), but now it's useless abandonware for anyone working with java 1.5. I'm still looking for a good non-commercial profiler. OptimizeIt is the best I've ever used, but it's expensive.

What version of Delphi are you using? The latest version of Delphi, Delphi 2006 is .Net 1.1 only afaik (http://www.borland.com/resources/en/pdf/products/ delphi/bds2006_feature_matrix.pdf)

The implementation of said tool was unfortunately fairly mediocre, and I finally gave up on trying anything non-trivial using ECO, after the third time that the source code and model became 'out of synch' and my 1000's of lines of generated code would not compile.

If I had the time, I would like to try an updated version of ECO, or perhaps another alternative, but overall, I still prefer the safety net of being in control of the coding process, and actually understanding what is going on under the hood.

Although Kylix is named after a Greek wine-drinking cup and the Kylix IDE itself does use WINE, the produced executables do not depend on WINE. The CLX library uses Qt runtime.

Although Kylix is named after a Greek wine-drinking cup and the Kylix IDE itself does use WINE, the produced executables do not depend on WINE. The CLX library uses Qt runtime.

1. Source code. C'mon, everything but the compiler itself is included in every release.
   
2. You can write anything (in Windows). Lightweight cmd line EXE, Win Service, CGI, GUI, DLL, n-tier AppServer, 3D game
   
3. Fast compiler. I still can't believe the difference when compared to a similar sized C app. sheesh
4. Object Pascal language. Don't sneer. It's readable. Your kid could comprehend much of it.
5. Tons of free code, utilities, libraries, components. Others langs have this. Delphi does too
6. Clear path to .NET for existing code with the VCL

1. Source code. C'mon, everything but the compiler itself is included in every release.
   
2. You can write anything (in Windows). Lightweight cmd line EXE, Win Service, CGI, GUI, DLL, n-tier AppServer, 3D game
   
3. Fast compiler. I still can't believe the difference when compared to a similar sized C app. sheesh
4. Object Pascal language. Don't sneer. It's readable. Your kid could comprehend much of it.
5. Tons of free code, utilities, libraries, components. Others langs have this. Delphi does too
6. Clear path to .NET for existing code with the VCL

1. Source code. C'mon, everything but the compiler itself is included in every release.
   
2. You can write anything (in Windows). Lightweight cmd line EXE, Win Service, CGI, GUI, DLL, n-tier AppServer, 3D game
   
3. Fast compiler. I still can't believe the difference when compared to a similar sized C app. sheesh
4. Object Pascal language. Don't sneer. It's readable. Your kid could comprehend much of it.
5. Tons of free code, utilities, libraries, components. Others langs have this. Delphi does too
6. Clear path to .NET for existing code with the VCL

1. Source code. C'mon, everything but the compiler itself is included in every release.
   
2. You can write anything (in Windows). Lightweight cmd line EXE, Win Service, CGI, GUI, DLL, n-tier AppServer, 3D game
   
3. Fast compiler. I still can't believe the difference when compared to a similar sized C app. sheesh
4. Object Pascal language. Don't sneer. It's readable. Your kid could comprehend much of it.
5. Tons of free code, utilities, libraries, components. Others langs have this. Delphi does too
6. Clear path to .NET for existing code with the VCL

[..]
In addition, Borland announced today that we will be divesting our IDE product lines, driving even tighter focus on the ALM market. These product lines include our award-winning Borland Developer Studio (Delphi, C++ Builder and C# Builder) and JBuilder. Our intent is to create a standalone business focused on the IDE market, capable of investing in the opportunities that exist for these product lines and advancing developer productivity. Borland's IDE business requires a distinct business model and focused investments different from our ALM business, which targets the broader software delivery organization. We believe that separating these businesses will enable both to flourish and grow more aggressively through targeted focus and investment. It goes without saying that we will do everything possible to ensure a successful transition of our products and customers to the new entity.
[..]

In fact, a few years ago, when Borland started giving away free downloads of their newest C++ compiler (command-line only), there were several places on the web that detailed how to integrate the new compiler with this IDE.

And their TASM product for DOS just rocked.

See this for more details about their objectScripting http://info.borland.com/borlandcpp/papers/scriptin g.html

Sniff... farewell my favorite IDE! (not that it got much attention these days anyways from Borland!)

It is a very user-friendly RAID system which can produce a polished product very rapidly. Since it uses Pascal, it does not have C's assininely stupid pointer-based string that are so loved by crackers thanks to their buffer overflows. And the Borland Pascal has zillions of extensions that makes it just as capable as any C++ compiler, but without the obfuscateness.

One could think of Delphi as "visual pascal on steroïds"; Delphi produces an executable file, which does not needs 36,000 DLLs to be arcanely installed.

And if you need to use a database, Delphi offers either standalone "Paradox" databases, or ODBC interface to connect to your favourite SQL database.

The latest, Delphi 2006 gives you Delphi, C++, C#, .NET and Win32 all in one.

Hi,

There is no reason whatsoever to use VB, unless you like a poor and dinosaur syntax. I encourage you to try Delphi, or even Borland's C++ Builder. You can get a personal edition of Delphi. You can then choose to target .NET or Win32 as you prefer.
If you feel like Java you can download Borland's JBuilder Foundation edition for free as well.

Explore your options. I find Delphi to be real easy for GUIs, mainly due to the power of Borland's VCL (Visual Control Library). And you won't be throwing away your time if you later want to move to any other language (I use BC++ now, I prefer C++ syntax), because the IDE, the tools, the graphical elements (controls) and the libraries are the same (C++Builder, C#Builder, etc).

Good luck! :)

Hi,

There is no reason whatsoever to use VB, unless you like a poor and dinosaur syntax. I encourage you to try Delphi, or even Borland's C++ Builder. You can get a personal edition of Delphi. You can then choose to target .NET or Win32 as you prefer.
If you feel like Java you can download Borland's JBuilder Foundation edition for free as well.

Explore your options. I find Delphi to be real easy for GUIs, mainly due to the power of Borland's VCL (Visual Control Library). And you won't be throwing away your time if you later want to move to any other language (I use BC++ now, I prefer C++ syntax), because the IDE, the tools, the graphical elements (controls) and the libraries are the same (C++Builder, C#Builder, etc).

Good luck! :)

RAD tools are a great and easy way to write GUI apps without getting knee deep in the API (in this case, Win32). Borland's Delphi, C++ Builder, and C# Builder are great tools, and all work similarly, but support different languages and tools... C++ Builder is my personal favorite, but I C# Builder is nice for developing .NET applications. Borland also has a similar tool for Java. And there's always Visual Basic.

RAD tools are a great and easy way to write GUI apps without getting knee deep in the API (in this case, Win32). Borland's Delphi, C++ Builder, and C# Builder are great tools, and all work similarly, but support different languages and tools... C++ Builder is my personal favorite, but I C# Builder is nice for developing .NET applications. Borland also has a similar tool for Java. And there's always Visual Basic.

RAD tools are a great and easy way to write GUI apps without getting knee deep in the API (in this case, Win32). Borland's Delphi, C++ Builder, and C# Builder are great tools, and all work similarly, but support different languages and tools... C++ Builder is my personal favorite, but I C# Builder is nice for developing .NET applications. Borland also has a similar tool for Java. And there's always Visual Basic.

IntelliJ IDEA is available for a free 30 day trial. Just download it and try it out, and you should be able to answer your own question. I did and decided that while IDEA is good, Eclipse has more compelling price:performance.

There are other free options as well:
Oracle JDeveloper
Borland JBuilder

And maybe a few others if you search Google for "free Java IDE".

You can use Borland or Eclipse for .net development. Where did you get this info?
http://shop.borland.com/dr/v2/ec_Main.Entry17c?SID =39696&SP=10023&CID=0&PID=772687&PN=1&V1=772687&CU R=840&DSP=&PGRP=0&ABCODE=&CACHE_ID=0

1. Java is not a magic bullet, like any language it needs skill and reasoning to use properly, that is not in dispute.

2. Objective-C is a native 'C' compiler based language with no defined security model, thus has many flaws which VM and GC based languages, like Java, lack.

3. I don't care about super computing mathematics, that is a niche activity; all out speed is not my target, reliablity, security, development speed and good enough processing speed are very important to me, my employer and their clients.

Developer time is pretty critical, I don't have the luxury of loads of time to hunt down nasty pointer and buffer overflow bugs, data type glitches or write vast amounts of wrapper code to secure some dated language, a client can lose serious money in that time, I need the language to be secure so that I can concentrate on getting new features and bug fixes out fast, with minimal surprises. The Java compiler and virtual machine has several levels of built-in security, which can be further tightened using code and/or properties files, this prevents most of the classic bugs and security issues of less secure (native) runtime environments. The JVM also automatically profiles running code and compiles busy sections to machine code, so that you can get pragmatic speed optimisation almost for free! Garbage collection is not a significant concern in Java 1.5 and can be greatly reduced with minimal extra design/coding effort. As a bonus the range of support libraries for Java is truely vast and due to the standard file format you don't have the dialect, compiler, linker or make issues of C, C++ etc, even Java version differences can be worked around by using free third party libraries.

As for Java applications:
(most are multi-platform and some are multi-lingual too)

"DBVisualiser" A multi-platform database tool
http://www.dbvis.com/products/dbvis

"Force Field Explorer" A computational chemistry and molecular engineering tool
http://dasher.wustl.edu/ffe

"Azureus" A multi-platform Bittorrent P2P client/server
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/azureus/

"Eclipse" A multi-platform IDE and GUI framework
http://www.eclipse.org/
http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

"Net Beans" A multi-platform IDE and GUI framework
http://www.netbeans.org/

Many of Borlands development product e.g. JBuilder, C++Builder, C#Builder etc., all multi-platform.
http://www.borland.com/us/

Numerous graphics, video, audio and graphical modelling and visualisation tools.

Various GUI charting libraries (Free & commercial), including Crystal Reports...

Loads of web servers, web frameworks and order types of servers: Tomcat, Web Sphere etc.

Loads of XML Tools and libraries, both free & commercial!

Google on "BorlandDelphiPersonalEdition.exe" and download it.
Then go to http://www.borland.com/downloads/download_delphi.h tml and register to get a free key for the personal version you've downloaded.

Go to Borland download page and get the free Delphi Personal. I work with many languages (C#, Objective-C, 4D, sometimes Java), but Delphi is the most productive and fun to use, by a wide margin. As a plus, you can generate apps for both win32 and the .NET framework, with the same language.

Have fun in your return to coding!

I've used the DCC program. It's the Delphi Commandline Compiler.

Or that might just be a different DCC. I have no idea what he means by DCC.

Where's pascal.net and cobol.net?

Pascal.Net is here and Cobol.net is here. Too damn easy.

Hello,

Perhaps you meant Borland Sidekick?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

I think you can writte at least some Linux compatible code with Delphi and Kylix http://www.borland.com/us/products/kylix/index.htm l.

I worked in Australia in 2003 for my last internship and I had to use e-tax once I came back in Europe. Since I had no Windows workstation at home, I used wine with it and it worked well anyway (except I spent 3 hours to fill my informations since I was not very familiar with the Aussies tax system)

In France, the e-tax equivalent works well with Java and is compatible with MacOS and Linux as well, I hope such systems OS-neutral will generalize.

well, since you're using JBuilder from Borland, why not just ask Borland-- a member of the Eclipse Foundation and who has already announced that the next version of JBuilder will be based on Eclipse?

see: Borland Announces JBuilder® Product Roadmap, New Eclipse-Based Collaborative Developer Environment
and Borland to Ring In New Era of Java(TM) Innovation at JavaOne

rob

well, since you're using JBuilder from Borland, why not just ask Borland-- a member of the Eclipse Foundation and who has already announced that the next version of JBuilder will be based on Eclipse?

see: Borland Announces JBuilder® Product Roadmap, New Eclipse-Based Collaborative Developer Environment
and Borland to Ring In New Era of Java(TM) Innovation at JavaOne

rob

how about asking Borland if we may write something their patent covers?

Someone on Borland suggested it, too:

http://blogs.borland.com/dcc/archive/2005/05/12/42 94.aspx

From the URL above:

If you're seeking reassurance that some artifact won't be used to sabotage a project, just ring the doorbell and ask. There are much better ways to open a discussion than throwing a brick through the window.

Borland chief scientist, Danny Thorpe, made an interesting blog entry on the Delphi Compiler Core site. "If you're seeking reassurance that some artifact won't be used to sabotage a project, just ring the doorbell and ask. There are much better ways to open a discussion than throwing a brick through the window." The full entry is available here.

Danny Thorpe, Borland's chief scientist replies to the patent issue here...
http://blogs.borland.com/dcc/archive/2005/05/12/42 94.aspx

Before making a fuss, it seems no one simply asked Borland. Read this blog by one of Borland's main developers:

http://blogs.borland.com/dcc/archive/2005/05/12/42 94.aspx

And BTW, before making statements like "They don't have any products to sell these days do they?" you might have checked that first. Would have done a lot of good to your credibility.

check out the first feature.

This is essentially what Borland did with Interbase. Check the Firebird web site, especially the project history and you'll see how Borland changed their mind but only after the cat was out of the bag.