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Borland Releases Kylix 2
Tal Cohen writes "Borland Kylix 2 is now available. Most new features are geared at Enterprise-level developers; the Open edition is still available for free download. The CLX (cross-platform component library) is covered under both GNU and Borland's license." The new features list is interesting - a fair number of buzzwords, but it also looks like they are supporting a lot of the new stuff. The white papers have some interesting topics - including gcc vs. Kylix.
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.
I started programming with TurboC and Turbo Assembler. I'm now using Builder 5. The drag'n'drop interface is very nice, as are the make files (which are XML,btw). Borland has always had very good compilers, and the STL they use is quite nice. They also ship printed documentation, for those of us who actually rtfm. As soon as they have the C++ version done (RSN for about a year now), I'll buy it.
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that introduced the $49 IDE back in 84, and have consistently turned out more standards-compliant C++ compilers than you know who. And your tastes obviously don't count for much if they lead you to that opinion about Object Pascal. It's still considered by many one of the most advanced and elegant natively compiled languages around. OTOH Forte is certainly not considered the greatest IDE by many. But then again, those are YOUR tastes.
That's funny in a way. KDevelop is trying hard to emulate Visual Studio, which itself has done its damndest to incorporate any Delphi features it could pilfer (esp. ever since Heijlsberg got on-board), while also introducing a slew of new languages and a new component model. Yet Delphi is still considered the black sheep, because it uses Object Pascal. Well, happy C# coding--never mind that it's a veritable semantic OP clone.
It has always been common knowledge that a key to Microsoft's dominance is making things easy for programmers so that they develop for the Windows platform. Is it just me has there been a real drop-off of interest by developers in all things Microsoft?
.Net and C#. Surely with Windows being the dominant platform, and .Net being Microsoft's new technical strategy, you'd expect some excited discussion about it amongst developers, but it's just not happening.
I remember there was a time about five years ago when most developers wouldn't even consider developing for anything other than Windows technologies and developer's magazines reflected that. These days, however, I see very little excitement about Microsoft technologies, for instance, I don't see lot of enthusiasm amongst developers about
This is just a feeling I have, and I have been trying to think of a way to quantify it, if nothing else to prove to myself that this sea-change is actually occurring and not just because I now take my information from different sources. The simple metric I have come up with is this - the number of times a word occurs on Google:
Linux - 30,100,000
Microsoft - 20,100,000
This crude metric seems to suggest that Linux has 10m more pages than all of Microsoft's products put together. Seeing as Microsoft has such a dominant position in the desktop space and is still much more of a household name than Linux, I think this is quite a clear demonstration that there is a lot more material about Linux out there than about Microsoft's products.
This came as a suprise:
"Linus Torvalds" - 640,000
"Bill Gates" - 649,00
I would have expected Bill Gates (who's a household name) to occur a lot more than Linus.
This is also suprising:
"Internet Explorer" - 2,730,000
Mozilla - 2,730,000
"Linux developer" - 20,600
"Windows developer" - 12,200
Is it just me, or do these figures suggest that Microsoft should be very worried indeed?
Kdevelop and the recently released kdestudio 3.0 gold is playing hard.
You've never used Borland's Object Pascal compiler. For all intents and purposes, even going back to the early days of the Pentium, it compiles instantaneously. Give it a large project on a 333MHz PII and--bang--it is compiled and linked before you lift your finger off of the Build key. This is a huge, huge productivity boost.
Does the compiler do as much optimization as gcc? No. But it's still an optimizing compiler that gets within the "I don't care about the difference" range.
When I see people talking about needing dual Athlons to get their gcc compile times down to the single digit minutes, then I'm appalled. With Delphi you're at *zero*. That's liberating beyond belief.
Alas, you are equating apples to oranges.
First, I am not a Java developer. But, I am aware that one of the biggest problems facing the JBuilder team was the diversity of Java VMs (i.e. some worked and some don't). JBuilder allows you to target multiple Java VMs with ease and that was a bane to releasing a "stable" product. They worked with the various Java VM teams (Blackdown is one that comes to mind) to make it compatible. JB3 was a blacksheep product. JB4 fixed many issues and JB5 is now the current product.
After having coded in C, C++, the forsaken VB and a slew of other languages, I discovered Delphi in 1994. I haven't looked back since.
Why? Because it has enabled me and my teams to develop applications in a fraction of the time that C++ would have required and substantially more stable and reliable than VB has ever been. My Delphi apps came in on or ahead of schedule and don't crash. IMO, Delphi is a secret weapon when you need to get high quality, database applications out to the market place when under a tight schedule.
Yes, Delphi has had its bogus releases (Delphi 4 in particular). D3 was very stable and D5 fixed D4. D6 now offers cross platform development capability (if you use the CLX library) via Kylix. The language, Object Pascal, is not the same as Pascal just as C++ is not C. I suggest you take a few hours and learn the differences between Object Pascal and Pascal. The only real downside to Object Pascal is it is more verbose than the equivalent C/C++ code. But, then again, it's also a lot easier to understand and maintain (a side benefit of its Pascal roots).
Kylix has bugs (just as any major new tool does). Blame that on both errors in the Kylix tool itself as well as buggy Linux distros (RH in particular). To me, the only bug that really affects me in Kylix is the fact that TThread is broke. Did they fix it in K2? Let's hope so.
My point being, is that you had a bad experience with a single Borland tool. Never mind the fact that many other development shops gave it high praise...you had a bad experience.
Before you blast Borland for putting out "inferior products at insane prices", I suggest you learn more about their products, read some serious critical reviews and then try the products yourself. You may come to realize just how far off base your statements really are.
As for the high prices...well, I can't dispute that. They did it to keep pace with Microsoft. Why? Because how can a product be good when it costs so little? Surely that other product that costs twice as much must be twice as good. Right? By that reasoning, I guess that means that Open Source and Free software must really suck. We know that's not true. FWIW, Borland now appears to be reviewing their pricing structure.
> And just what is wrong with Pascal?
:= for assign? Just give me the dam equal sign already! :)
Not trolling or meaning to start a "holy war", as this is just a personal opinion:
- Declarations are backwards, due to the awkward grammer: name type
Compared to the more logical C/C++ way: type name
- The distinction between functions and procedures (the language sports an artifical difference.) The lack of parenthesis in the declaration make it difficult to quickly visually spot functions.
- Operators, or the lack of them (no bit shifts, scope operator, namespaces?) i.e.
- Too wordy. { } are don't clutter my code whitespace, like 'begin' 'end' do.
In short, I just hate how the language looks.
It's the same as a person liking one spoken language over another. Sure they both can explain concepts, but which one is more compact, and is "fluent" for the person?
Pascal is a great teaching language, and Delphi is very impressive (Borland has always had lightning fast compiles on their Pascal languages, due to the grammar.) But I'd rather take a language I hate less (C/C++) then one that gives me a grammer that I hate (Pascal & sons.)
I like the multiparadigm support of C++.
i.e. procedural, object orientated, and generic programming paradigms.
For me, Pascal++ is just plain wrong, but if you're productive at using it, hey, more power to you!
Cheers