Borland Releases JBuilder to Eclipse

ricochet81 writes "The Register is reporting that Borland has released the base version of JBuilder as open source on Eclipse! Is this just the next company to use open source as part of a marketing tool, akin to Sun, IBM and Oracle's opensource IDE push? Is the future of enterprise IDE open?"

Comments

Delphi too, please

[Aggrajag]

Just opensource Delphi as well. I just love Pascal as a programming language.

Re:Delphi too, please

[F1re]

What about Lazarus?

Re:Delphi too, please

[Anonymous Coward]

lazarus makes horribly large binaries, the simplest gui hello world is 1 meg or so

Re:Delphi too, please

[F1re]

It's still pre-release and there are things you can do about it.

Re:Delphi too, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Lazarus isn't ready yet for the masses, and I believe it won't be for another year or so; I regularly download and test it since two years, then I delete it because it simply still isn't there.
It looks promising but it's still buggy as hell. Last time I tried it, less than 3 months ago, it crashed X every time I opened twice in a row a configuration dialog. This made Lazarus unusable for me.

Re:Delphi too, please

[fm6]

Lazarus is just an OS alternative to the Delphi libraries. If you add Open Pascal, you do have an alternative for hacking out Delphi code. But without an OS equivalent of the Delphi IDE, your missing the one component everybody buys Delphi to use.

I can't see the usual set of motley OS volunteers creating and maintaining an alternative to Delphi. I used to help write the Delphi API documentation, and I can't begin the convey what a massive effort it is just to maintain that product. Not something you can do without the backing of somebody with deep pockets. If Borland chooses to get behind an OS version of Delphi (as they now have with JBuilder) it might be a different matter. Though it's worth noting that their previous attempt to open source a produce (Interbase) did not go well. Frankly, I don't think Borland's notoriously factious corporate culture makes them a good partner in an OS project.

Re:Delphi too, please

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't need the full Delphi. Even opening the VCL alone would give us a very well designed Object Model. Writing stubs to remap calls to xlib, glib, whatever would be a nightmare but the end result could pay. The less we are forced to use GTK, the better Linux will become.

BTW, the VCL library is the same used also on Borland's C++ Builder which is -surprise- a C++ IDE, so a Pascal compiler could be used, albeit not required.

Re:Delphi too, please

[F1re]

LCL is the alternative to the Delphi VCL libaries. Lazarus IS the alternative IDE to the delphi IDE. Free Pascal is the compiler.

It's coming along nicely. You should grab a nightly build and have a look.

Documentation is a big problem though, as with most os projects.

Re:Delphi too, please

[tomhudson]

I used to help write the Delphi API documentation,

2 thick volumes, just for the class libraries. Nice stuff. Fairly complete, too. I always liked (old) Borlands' documentation. The "documentation-only-on-a-cd" trend devalues a product.

Re:Delphi too, please

[killjoe]

Delphi/Object pascal does need some updating though. They really need something to make sure an application you wrote with delphi can be easily compiled by somebody else. Maybe something like ant or a way to specify dependencies via relative paths or something.

Right now if you built a non trivial delphi app and sent me the code I would have to install every single component you used (the same versions in most cases) and place them in the exact same directory structure as you in order to compile your code.

Re:Delphi too, please

[fm6]

My mistake. I read the first sentence on the "about Lazurus" page, which says, "Lazarus is the class libraries for Free Pascal that emulate Delphi," and stoped there.

Re:Delphi too, please

[b17bmbr]

lazarus makes horribly large binaries, the simplest gui hello world is 1 meg or so

than it's compteting with visual basic, not delphi.

Re:Delphi too, please

[fm6]

Actually, they stopped publishing the hard copy long before I was hired. The current version of the API reference would be something like 10 or 12 volumes, would cost hundreds per hard-copy set -- and would be obsolete within a couple of years. And it'd be a pain to use. With a help engine, you can select an keyword in the IDE, press F1, and go immediately to the correct topic.

In theory anyway. When I joined, they still used the obsolete RTF-based help engine, fed by huge Word files that were a pure nightmare to maintain. So things got a little disorganized. The current XML-based help system might be better, but I'm too depressed by all things Delphi to check it out.

Re:Delphi too, please

[fm6]

Delphi is a powerful tool for the brilliant lone programmer, but its support for collaboration is half-hearted, at best. Which pretty much mirrors the attitudes of the people who work on the product.

Re:Delphi too, please

[Anonymous Coward]

You want Borland to release a GPL version of VCL, for Linux? Done:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeclx/

Re:Delphi too, please

[cicho]

Install the same components, yes, but you absolutely don't need to replicate the directory structure.

Re:Delphi too, please

[tomhudson]

Decent printed manuals are a good anti-piracy technique. Also, they're an incentive for people who have pirated the software to go out and muy a legit copy, rather than spend money on books from 3rd parties.

The current version of the API reference would be something like 10 or 12 volumes, would cost hundreds per hard-copy set

People would gladly PAY hundreds per hard-copy set. Even when a free online copy is available. I bought the Gnu MAKE manual (O'Reilly) two weeks ago, even though the text is covered by the Free Documentation License.

This is where most software publishers are now getting it wrong. The manuals add value. Lots of value. I bought a copy of dBASE from Borland way back when just for the user manuals, even though I had Clipper (and their great user manuals).

So Borland eventually got to sell me an upgrade to dBASE5 as well, along with another set of manuals, even though I never used the software itself.

Ditto for Turbo C. Useful manuals. So I bought BC3.1. Another good set of books.

Same story for Turbo Pascal 7.

And the original Delphi.

Just a quick check in my home library - there's over 14 feet of shelf space devoted to computer programming. Most of the recent books, unfortunately, are not from the software manufacturers, but from 3rd parties (O'Reilly mostly).

Re:Delphi too, please

[Anonymous Coward]

CLX requires Kylix. The point here is having a free as in beer/speech Object Library; if it depends on proprietary software then it's not free from a practical point of view.

Re:Delphi too, please

[shadowbearer]

I bought Borland's first Turbo Pascal - for the IBM PC - a long time ago, and I remember being very impressed by the manual (not to mention the program!:) I showed it to a Vax sysadmin I knew, and he fell in love.

I wish a lot more companies would do what they do (did?)...

SB

Re:Delphi too, please

[Anonymous Coward]

CLX requires Kylix

How would it be different if VCL was open-sourced?

Re:Delphi too, please

[NavySpy]

It is true that the you need to have all the components a person has on their machine for you to compile on yoru machine. But what development tool /doesn't/ have that requirement? Of course you need all the code the original coder has.

It is /not/ true that they need to be in the same directory structure as the original machine.

Re:Delphi too, please

[tomhudson]

A lot of companies see documentation as an expense, not an asset or a revenue-generator. "We're in the software publishing business, not the book publishing business" and all that ...

I paid $500 for the original Delphi 1 when it came out, and it included a nice set of manuals. A year or so later, a friend bought a copy for a lot less, and, instead of the user manuals, he got a crappy Sam's book or something - you know, one of those "How to use Delphi for Dummies in 24 Hours Special Edition" type books.

If they had included a coupon for the original manuals for $X + shipping and handling, he'd have bought them instead of borrowing mine all the time, and they'd have made a profit on the books. Or they could have stocked both - the cheapie version for $y, and the version with the right manuals for $y+z.

I've got easily $10,000 invested in my library, so its not true that people who use open source aren't willing to spend the money. But don't just shovel your shit onto a disk and expect us to pay top dollar.

Re:Delphi too, please

[tomhudson]

Kylix is dead http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/11/04/HNkylix_ 1.html

Here's what they were saying in 2003 ...

SAN JOSE, CALIF. -- Borland's Kylix development software remains in limbo, with no new release having been issued for a year and the company not saying whether there will be an upgrade.
...
Borland CTO Blake Stone stressed the company's C++Builder as an alternative to Kylix.

It's still stuck at version 3 two years after this article was written ... Kylix's dead, Jim.

Re:Delphi too, please

[shadowbearer]

Yeah. Sigh :(

CD manuals can be nice if they are comprehensive (and have a good search engine) but all too often they are simply an afterthought. I don't even really mind too much printing and binding a CD manual - in some ways it's nice, you can tailor the format to your liking - but you still can't beat a good softbound well-written manual...

Is Borland still observing their tradition?

Cheers,
SB

Re:Delphi too, please

[tomhudson]

I think the people who make these decisions are the ones who don't know much about programmers.

Sure, we work with computers all day, but just take a look at any serious programmer - he or she will have a decent set of books after a few years.

Used to be, if you lost the CD, you could just send in the cover page of the manual to get another. With manuals fast going the way of the dodo and passenger pigeon, if you don't register, you're SOL.

As to why people don't register, I never registered my copy of Delphi 3 Pro because I was too busy using it at the time ... (deadlines are like diets - both are stressful).

Re:Delphi too, please

[shadowbearer]

Too true.

LOL! Books are going to be my downfall, I don't have the shelf space for them, so they reside in very large totes (for now) other than my most heavily used ones, that is. Bastards are heavy when there's 60 gallons of them.

Mom accidentally washed my backpack once with my Borland 5&1/4" floppies in them. I was understandably upset - well, she didn't think it was that big a deal. So I called Borland and they simply mailed me a new set of disks overnight, and me being an upset 17 year old nobody.

Now that was service! I loved them and expounded about them to all the computer geeks locally - I think there were four or five of us :)

Cheers!
SB

Re:Delphi too, please

[geminidomino]

See, if you had included a link to the text version, you'd have been modded up as "informative"

Bad Slashdotter!

Re:Delphi too, please

[Anonymous Coward]

The less we are forced to use GTK, the better Linux will become.

Huh?

Re:Delphi too, please

[stonecypher]

You mean Kylix, their free, open-source linux-targetting Delphi from 2001?

Re:Delphi too, please

[llefler]

The current XML-based help system might be better, but I'm too depressed by all things Delphi to check it out.

I have no idea where Delphi goes now. I've used every version up to 7, but took one look at Delphi 2005 and couldn't stand it. I love the Borland IDE, probably because I've been using it so long, and with D2005 and CBuilderX they took everything that made their IDE easy to use and threw it away.

Kylix is on my OS wish list. Then someone could rip out the old QT stuff and either update it or replace it with wxWidgets. I can continue to use D7 until I no longer use windows tools. I recently looked at QT Designer, and it felt lacking in comparison to C++Builder(also dead). Downloaded their spiffy demo only to find that the windows demo version isn't even compatible with the last version of BCC. It's not like they've been cranking out new releases. And on another rant, I don't understand the C++ resistance to properties. The world didn't end with C++Builder added them.... oh well.

Re:Delphi too, please

[fm6]

Kylix is on my OS wish list. Then someone could rip out the old QT stuff and either update it or replace it with wxWidgets.

I wouldn't count on being able to do either of these things. Integrating a core new library with Kylix or Delphi is non-trivial, and relies on an internal API that's not well-documented.

...C++Builder(also dead)...

I recently talked to a former colleague at Borland, fairly high up the food chain, and he was pretty shocked when I repeated the stories on Slashdot about C++Builder being dead. Apparently this story is the result of Borland's usual poor communication and schedule slippage.

Re:Delphi too, please

[runderwo]

Kylix may be free as in beer, but you are mistaken if you believe it is open source.

Re:Delphi too, please

[robslimo]

You mean you bought the first TP for the PC, right?

My first Turbo Pascal experience was on a Z80 based CP/M machine with 8 inch floppy disk drives. I was totally blown away by it's speed and the IDE was (still is) the coolest thing to happen to programming, ever.

Open? I sure hope so....

[ZephyrXero]

I think the future of all software is going to be more and more open ;) Companies are starting to learn that most components of their programs can be released in a free/open-source format (especially the file format) and then you can sell a more complex version with the real things that give your product value added on top of that.

Re:Open? I sure hope so....

[nametaken]

most components of their programs can be released in a free/open-source format (especially the file format) and then you can sell a more complex version with the real things

I think you're right. But something frightens me about companies using open source as a loss leader. It makes me think they're missing the point.

But, who's to complain. If its something or nothing, I'll take something. :)

Re:Open? I sure hope so....

[ZephyrXero]

Agreed. A good example of what I'm getting at is video games. For years companies have made a big deal about who has the best graphics and what engine they use, but these days they're all heading towards the same major plateau. It would make more sense for everyone to work together one the graphics engines and everything and just focus on what really makes your game "your game". The levels, the characters, the art, the gameplay, the story, the music...that's what makes your game worth anything. It's a perfect time for developers to move towards this model and it would drop rising production costs back to something smaller companies could handle again. And the same concept could go for just about any software. Services aren't the only way to make money off open source ;)

Re:Open? I sure hope so....

[Taladar]

Game Engines in the same way as e.g. Movie Players or Ebook Readers would be a good thing. The Companies would create the content but not the engine and sell that. I imagine we would see more and better (read: more depth) games that way.

Re:Open? I sure hope so....

[saider]

But something frightens me about companies using open source as a loss leader. It makes me think they're missing the point.

Why is this frightening? This is common sense. If people are willing to develop a comparable product for free, why pay someone? Put that person onto a more profitable venture (add-ons, extra tools, support, etc).

Re:Open? I sure hope so....

[thumperward]

Errr, isn't "using open source as a loss leader" just a pessimistic way of saying "using open source as a way of driving uptake of products and services", which is the stated reason for every single corporate floss release since Netscape?

- Chris

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Too earlt to tell

[jvv62]

Seems to me the article doesn't really say anything. Thus it is too early to have a decent discussion of what Borland is doing. On the other hand it is nice to see an OSS product making headway against a proprietary product. I liked JBuilder, and I think there are some features to Jbuilder that would be nice additions to Eclipse. Also the GUI seemed a little more solid in JBuilder than in Eclipse.

Re:Too earlt to tell

[Anonymous Coward]

I used JBuilder couple of years ago.. before the Eclipse's reign.... During that time... JBuilder is based on Swing... (may be they are still swing based..) as compared to Eclipse's SWT.. I feel Eclipse is better than JBuilder in this sense.. if you compare, just the IDE (not the J2EE and other wizbang stuff).

I feel they would be releasing just the base IDE for J2SE dev and they will keep J2EE pieces to their hearts.. like IBM WebSphere App Developer.

Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[woah]

Not really, given that Microsoft would never do this with Visual Studio.

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god. Can you imagine a world with even more VS programmers? *shudder*

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[superpulpsicle]

Here, take this FREE visual studio 2005 Extreme Edition with FREE donuts... write all the programs you want. You just need to pay $300 for windows 2003 to compile it.

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[omicronish]

Here, take this FREE visual studio 2005 Extreme Edition with FREE donuts... write all the programs you want. You just need to pay $300 for windows 2003 to compile it.

You're closer than you think :) The Visual Studio 2005 Express edition betas (each geared toward a language such as C++, C#, VB.NET) are freely available at the moment, and final pricing has been set to $50 for each express edition, which is virtually free compared to the prices of past editions of VS.

Of course you can always go completely free (in terms of IDE price) with SharpDevelop or notepad, but VS is quite nice, especially at that price.

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[kabz]

You're closer than you think :) The Visual Studio 2005 Express edition betas (each geared toward a language such as C++, C#, VB.NET) are freely available at the moment, and final pricing has been set to $50 for each express edition, which is virtually free compared to the prices of past editions of VS.

Yes, but will they run on Linux ?

I thought not.

Seriously, can anyone reccomend a decent IDE that runs at a decent speed on Linux. Maybe Eclipse has improved, but the last time I tried it, the one second delay bring characters up to the screen kinda put me off.

I have been in the situation of pretty much only having vi to edit largish cpp files on Linux, which is like only having a chisel to clean your contact lenses. I HATE VI !!!!!!

One of the hardest parts of running Linux for me is having to give up Excel and MSDEV. Boo hoo :-((

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[Anonymous Coward]

The question still stands... Is the future of the enterprise IDE something other than Visual Studio.

I think so.

Already today, our company's bigger C# apps are developed in Emacs. Visual Studio is a nice way of clicking and dragging UIs together, but doesn't lend itself to enterprise needs (like checking in to Perforce, etc).

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[eviltypeguy]

If you don't mind using KDE stuff there's kdevelop, which is pretty nice.

If you're of the GTK persusasion, Anjuta's pretty decent too.

I must agree though, Visual Studio is the best that I've seen when it comes to editing source in an IDE still...

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[Taladar]

If you hate vi you might want to try emacs. It can do almost everything any modern GUI can and works with all languages known to mankind. Lots of information about it is available here. Be warned however that it might require some editing of config files to put together the perfect feature-set for your needs.

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you need six fingers on each hand to be able to use it productively.

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[kabz]

Yeah, I was discounting EMACS, since I already tried using it back in my Amiga 1000 days.

I think I'll try and give Eclipse another go. Hopefully it has support for C++ and Python, and if I can strip it down a bit, maybe it'll run at a decent lick on nice hardware.

Ever since I discovered the Spy editor on SunOS, I am loathe to use any non-visual editor.

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[mrlpz]

uh huh...and the $50 express editions are extremely limited ( about a 1/3 of the wizards of the next higher up edition ). The professional edition isn't that much better. Sure, more wizards, more tools, but when you get into the Enterprise Architect arena...oh yeah...open up that wallet baby...that's it..wider.....no..wider still....nope....just...one..more...0 to before the decimal.

Do a search for the pricing of Visual Studio Team System....EVERYBODY...EVERYONE....even MVP's who've been on the take for years, are complaining. They're trying to do to their tools business what they did to their office business. That's why you'll still see folks using Visual Studio 6 and VS.NET 2003 for years to come. Prices just aren't commensurate with what you get anymore. period.

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[onash]

Yes! And VS 2005 C++ edition is the only reason why I use my Windows machine these days. I use my mac for everything else than C++ development, because this VS express is the best C++ IDE I've ever used.

KDevelop and XCode aren't even close! download VS for C++ and try debugging.. I hate how good it is :P

For Java, try IntelliJ IDEA. I prefer Java as a language for prototyping over the scripting languages, as that IDE lets me be more productive than the most scripting languages. (unless Its working with text, then Perl rocks)

I can't understand people who just use one language :).. use them all!

(these thoughts were written because of too much coffee)

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[geminidomino]

As much as I hate to agree, I have to throw in another "Yay" in the VS column. Of course, I *can't* use it anymore since I've gone pure OSS (FreeBSD Servers and slackware desktop), so I'm in the market, as it were.

I thought Anjuta only worked with C/C++ tho.

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[aCapitalist]

Someone needs to do a vi plugin for VS2005, like Eclipse has. Supposedly, the latest VSIP beta2 SDK http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/extend/
is going to make it easier to trap keystrokes.

By profession, I'm a linux programmer, but I've been playing around with VS2005 beta2 and it is very slick. If there's something that Microsoft does know how to do, it's IDEs

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[aCapitalist]

If you hate vi you might want to try emacs. It can do almost everything any modern GUI can and works with all languages known to mankind.

That's just not true. Try Eclipse, IDEA, or VS2005 beta2 and then tell me that Emacs can do everything those do.

Last time I checked, Emacs (or at least Xemacs) was still wrestling with getting xft patches in on Unix.

I love vi, but not because of the vim program...because of the vi keybindings. I don't want some warmed over console program. I want vi within a modern IDE, not some architecture stuck in the 1970s.

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[rve]

This is a very interesting thing you say here. Visual studio is not as suited for large projects as Emacs?

I kind of envy windows programmers for the fantastic developmen tools they have at their disposal. They have visual studio, we have big dinosaur IDE's so slow and cumbersome that most seem to revert to good old simple text editors.

I guess the grass on the other side of the fence is always greener.

Re:Is the future of enterprise IDE open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that despite all the hoo-ha to do with MS rendering pages differently for different browers, this page looks like crap with a Firefox UA string, but it's just fine with the IE UA...

What do you want to open source today?

[khujifig]

Anything from MS people would like to see open sourced?

(wishful thinking, I know)

Re:What do you want to open source today?

[jarich]

Anything from MS people would like to see open sourced?

The odds are slim to none, but since you asked...

If MS open sourced a "basic" version of Windows, they could easily achieve complete world OS dominance. The free version of linux rational would appear to evaporate and MS would continue to make a killing for years to come on their OS add-ons, office suite and development tools.

Just a thought... I personally prefer linux, but I can see it playing out that way.

Re:What do you want to open source today?

[rebug]

To most people, Windows already is free. It's a non-optional compoent of their new Dell, not an add on. Non-geeks never upgrade their OS, so Windows' cost is never an issue.

Re:What do you want to open source today?

[FidelCatsro]

Either that hapens or more likely ,
linux has an open source version of windows code to look at and linux becomes 100% binary compatible with windows.
The free windows gets add'd too by the FOSS community and becomes on par with the pay version quickly .
Regular windows is now uneeded and MS has to change its bussiness methods as it cant sell windows anymore.

Re:What do you want to open source today?

[cafard]

Easy one. I'll pick DirectX. Games easily ported through platforms... *dreams*

Now, such a move would be a commercial suicide for them, as it would definitely cut the last major interest of the Windows platform as a home desktop. I won't hold my breath :).

Re:What do you want to open source today?

[jarich]

To most people, Windows already is free

True... I was thinking more of emerging markets, were cost matters a great deal.

Re:What do you want to open source today?

[linguae]

Well, it would probably never happen, but I'd like to see the specifications for MS Office's file formats opened. If the file formats were open to everybody, people from various platforms and even applications can finally read and write Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Access files seamlessly. Besides, Microsoft's formats could finally be a standard.

If this ever happens, I don't think that everybody will switch from whatever MS Office version that they're using to OpenOffice or some other alternative immediately; however, MS Office would be to the Office File Formats as Adobe Acrobat is to PDF; Acrobat may be the "official" way to make PDFs and it has many nice features, but one can make tools that makes PDFs.

Re:What do you want to open source today?

[linguae]

There is a huge difference between free as in "comes with my Dell" and free as in speech (open source), though. The grandparent post was referring to open-source Windows, not "free" Windows.

Re:What do you want to open source today?

[tomhudson]

To most people, Windows already is free

True... I was thinking more of emerging markets, were cost matters a great deal.

I think they already have that covered - you can buy a copy for the local equivalent of a buck or two in any "emerging market".

Re:What do you want to open source today?

[Taladar]

I agree. Gaming is the only reason why I still have a Windows on the Harddisk of my main computer (the others are Linux only) and even boot it occasionally.

What it really means ...

[tomhudson]

... is that Java and/or Borland, is dying.

Seriously, Borland used to be a cool company, before they became Inprise and forgot what made them great in the first place. And java still suffers from bloat and speed issues.

Re:What it really means ...

[Anonymous Coward]

java suffers most from it's **horrible** look and feel in graphical apps.
The speed issues are usually not a problem unless you are doing something with java that you should have used C for.

Re:What it really means ...

[tomhudson]

java suffers most from it's **horrible** look and feel in graphical apps.

oh yeah. "horrible" is being too kind by half.

The speed issues are usually not a problem unless you are doing something with java that you should have used C for

In my book, that's pretty much everything. There's got to be a better way.

Re:What it really means ...

[johnjaydk]

What bloat really means is a gigantic lib of great parts so you don't have to code everything from scratch. The core language is still fairly compact. Of course not as compact as C but nothing else is that small. It's the swiss army knife of programming languages.

Now try to compary Java with C++. I mean REALLY C++. All of it. Now that is a big language even without STL.

Java GUI's can be slow. Swing in particular takes a lot of flak and I've seen some nasty personal (and public) attacks on Swing core people. The truth of the matter is that it all depends on how you program stuff. JBuilder's gui is build on swing and the last time I checked it was rather snappy.

Anyway the fun stuff is on the server-side, there Java has really found a home. There is also a lot of development happening in that area and the best of it open-source. Don't burry Java yet.

Re:What it really means ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gigantic standard libraries are good. Core language bloat is bad, and that's the direction Java is moving in. Just because C++ has some weaknesses doesn't mean Java is good.

Spend a month using Smalltalk, and then try to go back to Java; it's eye-opening. Java has a few good ideas, like interfaces, as well as wider recognition and support, but to a large extent, it feels like a really, really bad clone of Smalltalk (which, coincidentally, was what sun wanted to sell, but the major smalltalk vendor decided to be a pain about it).

Re:What it really means ...

[tomhudson]

I think the big problem was two-fold (and I just KNOW that people are going to go nuts over this, but I'll say it anyway):

1. Requiring everything to be an object was a VERY dumb idea.
2. Requiring garbage collection, as opposed to making it a programmer-selected or user-selected toggle, was a mistake

A bit of personal history that maybe others can relate to ... when I first made the switch from c to c++, I went through the same "let's make everything a reusable object" phase. And, like everyone else, I discovered three things:

1. even "re-usable" objects have to be extended when new problems come up, and it may be more efficient (both in programmer time and code execution time) to make a custom object from scratch
2. the more classes, the more you have to be careful of the interplay between them, and the more time spent coding so that they all "play nice"
3. simple is always better

Don't get me wrong - I love coding objects. But, while they're usually part of the solution, they're never the whole solution.

I expect my garbage-collection statement to be regarded as flamebait by some people, but reference-counting garbage collectors are slow by nature. Sure, incrementing or decrementing a reference count is quick - but then, doing the mark-and-sweep over all the existing objects, checking for circular references, etc., is always going to be non-trivial when done in software. The original java was supposed to do this in hardware.

There are other ways. Create an object that keeps track of all memory it allocates, and frees it in its' destructor. Yes, I know this doesn't safely let an object share memory with another object, but in such a case, maybe the other object should just get a copy of the data? Or even stuff it into a struct outside the object, with a tag noting whether the creating object or the receiving object has the right to free the memory?

If it was possible to turn the garbage collector off, and you trusted the code, you'd see java performance go way up.

WRT the STL, I hear you. The STL is not on my preferred list (and I'm being polite here).

Re:What it really means ...

[Joe Tie.]

In my book, that's pretty much everything.

That's my problem with Java. I like the concept, I really like the large amount of libraries, but I've never been sure when exactly I'd use it. I've never seen, say, an emulator for game consoles written in Java that ran at full speed. Emulating a gamegear isn't something that should be bringing a modern computer to its knees. It might, then, be good for things where the major focus is on simple functions - but then less verbose languages like python seem more appropriate.

Re:What it really means ...

[Taladar]

The real problem with Java is that they tried to make to many compromises and failed miserably. Why bother making it look like C when they could have designed a modern language (meaning: no semicolons e.g.) and why creating an object for everything (especially: why for the main-program?) and if everything is an object, why can't the primitive types be used like objects? Why is there no standard way to install different versions in parallel or for Bytecode to tell the user the required version of Java? Why can't they implement containers that return the type of object that was put in instead of relying on casts? Java was a good idea that is implemented in almost the worst possible way. Even though Swing and speed are the main issues for many people there are more problems beyond that. And for all those people telling me now that some of those problems are fixed in the latest version I can only say that a horrible design with some patches isn't the same as a good design.

Re:What it really means ...

[Anonymous Coward]

C is to rapier as Java is to 1950s-era chain saw.

Re:What it really means ...

[tomhudson]

when they could have designed a modern language (meaning: no semicolons e.g.)

I like semicolons, you miserable clod!

Seriously, semicolons let you pack more than one statement on a line unambiguiously.

do_something(a,b); do_something_else(c); all_done(x); // process the stuff

rather than

// process the stuff
do_something(a,b);
do_something_else(c);
all_done(x);
// done processing

The one_function_per_line is a holdover from the old days of 80x24 or 80x25 displays. The usual workaround was to do this:

#define PROCESS_THE_STUFF do_something(a,b); \
do_something_else(c); \
all_done(x);

PROCESS_THE_STUFF

Notice that you can now even leave the semicolon off.

I usually do this with object definitions that have a method function that takes no parameters, for example, object.dump();

#define dump dump()
#define printMe printMe()
#define next next()
#define last last()
#define first first()
#define prior prior()

o.dump;
o.printMe;

etc ...

just syntactical sugar, but java is so verbose its fugly.

Re:What it really means ...

[vegetasaiyajin]

The core language is still fairly compact.

It was fairly compact until 1.4.x.
The new Java 2 version 5 version 1.5 language is not compact. It's a complete, badly designed, mess. That's the problem of putting a lot of ignorant people (JCP) to take decisions that should be made by a small group of knowledgable people.

Re:What it really means ...

[mrlpz]

Which is specifically why Eclipse came up with SWT. SWT may not be the be all end all, but it IS a step in the right direction. And frankly compared to how .NET is a layer on top of Win32, well folks...SWT is no different. The same goes for GTK. Just like Mono sits on top of GTK+, well..that's what SWT does.

There are some relatively minor trade-offs, but name me any environments that have none, and we'll have exposed you as a liar.

Re:What it really means ...

[Shulai]

Exactly. If don't care speed, more dynamic languages as Python are a better choice. If you do, you'll use C++, even being somewhat more complex.
It's interesting that, after the Java's hype in the mid 90's, it mostly become a niche for Web on J2EE.

Re:What it really means ...

[tim256]

Borland used to be a cool company

Borland is a software tools company. They make tools to help programmers. But, nowadays there are so many open source programming tools that Borland has to compete with. They are really having a tough time.

Re:What it really means ...

[tomhudson]

So who or what is going to be the NEXT Borland?

Re:What it really means ...

[stonecypher]

... is that Java and/or Borland, is dying.

Yeah, yeah. We've heard that since Borland moved away from Pascal as its only product back in 1983. If you'd actually look, Borland's market share is growing, their pockets are getting deeper, and they're reaching more platforms. That's a hell of a balancing act for a dying company, that growing, getting rich and powerful bit. Wonder how they're managing it.

As far as Java dying, I don't know, and I don't care. It was stillborn with momentum.

Re:What it really means ...

[stonecypher]

Of course not as compact as C but nothing else is that small.

Assembler, portable assembler, Forth, ml, IO, Small, TIPI, SR, MPD, TCL, TIMI, Shakespeare, uL, Brainfuck, K, NICE, and pretty much every domain-specific language I've ever seen come to mind as significantly smaller languages, and they're all usable except Brainfuck.

Now that is a big language even without STL.

The hell are you talking about? C++ is a tiny language. It only added sixteen keywords to C. Both C and C++ are miniscule because of the design decision to put almost everything into the libraries. The reason this was done was to make the C runtime easy to port, and it has succeeded fantastically for the sole reason that the standards committee has been unwilling to add almost anything to the core language.

If you want a real sense of the size of C and C++, you have to look at unhosted compilers without libraries. When you realize that that means you won't get new or malloc, you'll get a real sense of just how small those languages actually are.

If, on the other hand, you count the standard libraries for C++, then you have to count them for C, and the libraries for C make C larger than almost any language out there (it has real competition in C++, Java, Ada, Fortran, and COBOL; nothing else.)

Besides, the STL isn't very big in comparison to the rest of the C++ Standard Library, or even in fact to the C Standard Library. Just because it's the part you see and use most often doesn't mean it's particularly big. (And just because your implementation is big doesn't mean the spec is big. Have a look at an old STLPort instead of Plaugher's or RogueWave's STLs, both of which are extremely large.)

Re:What it really means ...

[Anonymous Coward]

No one. Borland is failing because MS and IBM have made the developer space fiscally imposible to enter. They both want developers (businesses) to develop for thier systems (thier database, thier OS, thier Application server etc). Serving developers is not a fiscally wise decision for any company, particularly a public one to make. Developer tools are complex and expensive to build (Eclipse has HUNDREDS of microsoft employees working on it).

Re:What it really means ...

[petermgreen]

thing is javas idea of wrapping primitives in immutable objects basically relies of some form of GC

and people wanted java to be able to handle untrusted code situations where a direct free would be a rather risky thing to allow (javas gc does not use refcounting btw)

java is pretty intimately tied to gc if you ripped that out you would basically have to start from scratch with all the libs

p.s. i don't like gc either but if you rip it out of java than what you have isn't java anymore

Re:What it really means ...

[tomhudson]

Nope, your facts are off.

If you'd actually look, Borland's market share is growing

They used to have 2/3 of all the computer language market. Now they're a niche player, dropping a product here, a product there, in order to be able to stay in business. The latest ones are Kylix, InterBase, and JBuilder.

their pockets are getting deeper

Their income is down 2% from last year, and dropping ... They made a profit "before restructuring charges", (warning, warning Will Robinson) ... so much for their pockets getting deeper. Here's their own predictions:

For the current second quarter, Borland said it expects to post a loss of 19 to 21 cents per share, which includes a $14 million restructuring charge. Revenue for the second quarter was projected at between $70 million to $73 million.

So, on to the next part ...

and they're reaching more platforms

like what? They're pretty much a Windows-only shop now. They've abandoned linux. They're not on Apple, so much for the *BSDs. Got any other platforms they're on?

That's a hell of a balancing act for a dying company, that growing, getting rich and powerful

They're shrinking, getting poorer and more irrelevant is each year goes by.

Borland finally figures it out...

[bogaboga]

Borland finally figures it out, and realizes that old saying "if you cannot beat them, join them". I wonder where we'll be on the software front 10 years down the raod, and hope it's not too late for them. One thing is for sure: The software front will be very interesting. Now, let them release Delphi and Kylix.

Irritatingness

[aking137]

I was unfortunate enough to subjected to Borland JBuilder whilst making the mistake of taking the Introduction to Programming module at the Computer Science department at Durham University in late 2000, and it was the worst piece of commercial software I have ever witnessed. It had a minimum recommended spec of 128MB of ram (this was nearly five years ago), or 256MB if you had it, and even then, doing simple stuff like selecting something from the menus could lock your machine up for minutes.

When I joined the course we were just using javac and a text editor of our choice, but a couple of weeks later they had to go and force us to switch to that, and to hand in our work in a JBuilder format. The slowness did make sense; apparently they had just rewritten the whole thing so that it was in Java itself, and this was 4-5 years ago, so of course it was going to be slow.

The software was so completely irritating and impossible to use that I decided it was more than my university career was worth and dropped out of university with nothing at the end of first year - which has now turned out to be one of the best career moves I've ever made. Thanks, Borland! My thoughts go out to any poor sod forced to use it.

Re:Irritatingness

[Monkelectric]

At one time, Borland compilers were among the best in the world. Microsoft wanted to cripple them -- so they offered *all* of their top engineers double their salary at Borland to work for Microsoft. I think something like 40 engineers defected. Borland products have *sucked* since.

I used to be a big fan of C++ Builder but it was completely unusable. In a short (few hundred line) project I ended up finding *SEVERAL* bugs in their stdio and cin/cout implementation.

Anyone want a hardly used copy of C++ Builder? :)

Re:Irritatingness

[Anonymous Coward]

If you hated it so much, why didn't you just write your projects in a text editor, test them, and then import it into JBuilder? You can't really blame Borland for becoming a drop out, your lack of thought probably affected other classes too.

Re:Irritatingness

[justins]

At one time, Borland compilers were among the best in the world. Microsoft wanted to cripple them -- so they offered *all* of their top engineers double their salary at Borland to work for Microsoft. I think something like 40 engineers defected. Borland products have *sucked* since.

I know we are all supposed to hate Microsoft and believe them to be the cause of all that is wrong in the world, but Borland hosed themselves. Does the word "Inprise" mean anything to you?

Borland made some very, very bad decisions which made abandoning ship appealing to the top people. It's not as if Microsoft imposed an utterly retarded management on Borland during the mid-nineties.

Re:Irritatingness

[Textbook Error]

The software was so completely irritating and impossible to use that I decided it was more than my university career was worth and dropped out of university with nothing at the end of first year

Here's an alternative explanation. You're a bit of a dumbass, and decided to bail from a privilege that most of humanity never gets a chance to experience (higher education).

Anyone who decides to give up that opportunity because of a flaky IDE is a dipshit. Sorry to have to be the one to break it to you.

Re:Irritatingness

[killjoe]

And yet Borland sued MS for poaching their top talent and MS settled for a a couple of hundred million.

You must admit that it's pretty damned hard to run a company when Bill Gates wants to put you out of business. It's amazing to me Bill failed with borland I guess we can thank the court system for that.

Re:Irritatingness

[benow]

The early builds were ass. They became much better over time.

Re:Irritatingness

[fnj]

I used to be a big fan of C++ Builder but it was completely unusable.

Care to have another go at that statement?

Re:Irritatingness

[mrlpz]

Which version ??? 6 ? I'll take it.

Re:Irritatingness

[Monkelectric]

Yea i messed that one up bad, what i meant was something more like, "I used to be a big fan of C++ Builder, but the later versions were unusable."

I had C++ Builder Pro (I think that was version, 2ish?) and upgraded (actually paid for) version 6 -- and was horrified to find that version 6 was FULL of bugs. You just coudlnt use it, at all.

Re:Irritatingness

[justins]

And yet Borland sued MS for poaching their top talent and MS settled for a a couple of hundred million.

It made good economic sense for them to do that. I doubt they, or the people they hired, thought they did anything wrong. The whiners at Borland probably did, but the simple truth is that they couldn't keep their people because they were fuckups who were not exactly the greatest bunch in the world to work for. So some of them left, boo hoo.

You must admit that it's pretty damned hard to run a company when Bill Gates wants to put you out of business.

No shit? I guess that explains why everyone and their mother uses the legal system to stick knives in Microsoft. It beats having to compete with them in the marketplace. In Borland's case it wasn't really enough to help much, since at the end of the day you actually have to sell something worth buying.

It's amazing to me Bill failed with borland I guess we can thank the court system for that.

Borland is effectively dead. The courts had nothing to do with it. Borland's crappy management team and crappy products had a lot to do with it. At this point it is a minor miracle they have any revenue at all.

Incidentally, it's mostly management failures that are fucking them, they still have some great engineers. That just isn't enough. (and I'm sure pointing that out is just as heinous of me as violating the "Microsoft is the greatest evil in the world" ethic here)

Re:Irritatingness

[killjoe]

"It made good economic sense for them to do that. I doubt they, or the people they hired, thought they did anything wrong. "

Wow, so they paid out two hundred million dollars even though they knew they were going to win huh?

"No shit? I guess that explains why everyone and their mother uses the legal system to stick knives in Microsoft."

Why not? It's a dog eat dog. MS plays by no rules, they have no ethics or morals. You can't play nice with MS, they will cut your throat and make your children drink your blood.

"Borland is effectively dead. The courts had nothing to do with it."

They aren't dead yet. Chances are somebody will buy them before they die. I bet they have a couple of lawsuits against MS still left in them. I hear MS is giving away 200 million dollars to anybody who files suit even if the suit is meritless and MS is sure to win.

Re:Irritatingness

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who decides to give up that opportunity because of a flaky IDE is a dipshit.

Amen.

It's amazing the number of people who'll use the requirement to use a particular IDE/language/OS as an excuse to quit their job/degree. If you're going to take a stand about an issue in your workplace, at least make sure it's one that actually matters.

Re:Irritatingness

[justins]

Wow, so they paid out two hundred million dollars even though they knew they were going to win huh?

Happens all the time. Removing the uncertainty of pending litigation would cause the stock price to boost pretty quickly, and sometimes it's just cheaper to settle. At the time their legal team had bigger worries to deal with, I would think.

Politically it was smart to give Borland a little boost, just as they gave Apple a little boost five or six years ago. They recognize that the next Apple or Borland might not be as incompetant as the ones we have now, and might be more of a threat.

MS plays by no rules, they have no ethics or morals.

The fundamental misunderstanding of the typical slashdotter is this: NOBODY in American business has much in the way of morals.

That said, I spend time occasionally reading about business and I wonder how anyone can attack Microsoft's morality with a straight face. Never mind the fact that there is real, live evil being done by global energy and mining concerns, stuff that, you know, actually kills people. Even by the tame standards of the software industry, Microsoft is basically okay. Compare them to somebody like CA, whose whole structure involves hoovering up other companies for their technology and firing everyone who works for them.

The "evil" thing about Microsoft is that they are a tough competitor and a dangerous partner. Wah.

Re:Irritatingness

[killjoe]

"'A company as large as Microsoft has employees that will have opinions on social issues that cover the entire spectrum. It's threatening to employees for the corporation to take a public position on these kinds of personal issues."

That's not true. I know of ehtical business people. None of them work at MS but that's another story.

Either way like I said suing the shit out of MS is an excellent way to compete with them. Like you say they are willing to give out hundreds of millions of dollars to remove uncertainty of legal litigation and to boost up their stock price.

You still haven't told me why people should not sue them though? If I was a corrupt business person (like you say all business people are) then why shouldn't I keep filing suits against MS and collecting hundreds of millions of dollars? Seems like easy money to me.

Re:Irritatingness

[jonwil]

Another thing that really hurt borland was when the stock market crash happened and put an end to the merger between Borland and Corel.

Re:Irritatingness

[justins]

First, that quote: did I write that? I honestly don't remember writing that, although it might be the crack I'm smoking. "Personal issues" doesn't sound like something I would ordinarily say.

You still haven't told me why people should not sue them though? If I was a corrupt business person (like you say all business people are) then why shouldn't I keep filing suits against MS and collecting hundreds of millions of dollars? Seems like easy money to me.

Ah, I wasn't clear enough, I guess. The main problem in my view is that the legal system allows this. As you say, it's pretty rational behavior, and to be expected. Deplored, but expected.

I'm not sure I'd want to say that "all business people are corrupt", I would be more inclined to say business and the legal system are often corrupt. Which I admit is a bit of a cop-out, since our legal system is largely something we control (in theory), but still.

I guess that isn't totally fair, either. "Immature" might be a better way of describing our legal system's approach to dealing with IP issues or modern antitrust law. Although "corrupt" comes to mind a lot, too.

I know of ehtical business people.

Sure, I do too. Ask them how they feel about the system as a whole...

Re:Irritatingness

[justins]

Another thing that really hurt borland was when the stock market crash happened and put an end to the merger between Borland and Corel.

Yeah. And in a larger sense, Borland pissed away a lot of good products because it didn't know what to do with them (not because they didn't have the engineering talent to maintain them). They would have had a heck of a time competing with Microsoft Office but they could have at least maintained a niche for technical people using office apps, technical writers and engineers. Ah well.

Re:Irritatingness

[jonwil]

Actually, Corel is/was much the same.
They have had some great products that they just let die instead of pushing. Corel office/Word Perfect on linux was one such thing (although the Corel Office for Java was probobly not a good idea)

Re:Irritatingness

[runderwo]

It's widely theorized that Microsoft simply maintains Borland as a shell corporation to propagate the illusion of competition in the market for Windows development tools.

Re:Irritatingness

[MemoryDragon]

The biggest problem for Borland was, that HJelfsberg left. However, I would hardly call Borlands C++ Compiler being the best of its, time, it was bug ridden as hell.

I left the Borland C++ compiler before C++ builder, however I must say, their Pascal compilers always were top notch.

Their pricing policy did not help them either to keep me. Once Borland called itself Inprise, their prices went the from the fair prices for fair software to, insance prices for mediocre quality way. Back then I worked at a company, which seriously considered the Corba Orb which Borland later bought for a project. Borland/Inprise bought the ORB and what happened was, that within a day, they hiked the prices 100% and the company I worked moved to the strongest competitor which was at a sane pricelevel.

The same desaster with Interbase, they bought it from Ashton Tate and had a possible Oracle killer at their hands, but never recognized the Gem. They drove customers away with the constant course between we will make another version and we will kill the product. Interbase still lives thanks to the OpenSource fork. Otherwise this excellent DB would be dead by now.

The problem with Borland is nowadays, that they got a market with JBuilder, but they are somehow crushed by Eclipse and by Microsoft .Net and somehow are caught in the middle with almost nothing really worthwile anymore. Corba not really interesting anymore. The database market was sort of never really a thought by them and basically they drove their old Interbase customers away and never managed to get new ones. The enterprise IDE market still is alive, but within a five years timeframe, the prices will come to a sane level for this stuff. Exadel and MyEclipse lead the way here.

Borland is basically caught in the middle between IBM and Microsoft, the only way out I see for them is to move their enterprise stuff to a sane pricevel and become some kind of Plugin Vendor for Eclipse and VStudio.net.

All or only part?

[imemyself]

What exactly is gonig to be OSS'ed? The entire thing or just bits and pieces of it?

Borland is realizing what IBM did

[thammoud]

years ago. There is no money to be made in stock IDE's. Building value added plugins for a popular IDE (Eclipse) and people might pay more money. The Java platform is in a wonderful position with all the free (and superb) IDE's available. Eclipse and Netbeans are both excellent IDE's that other platforms can only dream off.

My prediction is that IDEA's IntelliJ will also go open source. The gap between it and the above mentioned IDE's is very narrow to warrant spending the dough.

Re:Borland is realizing what IBM did

[Anonymous Coward]

My prediction is that IDEA's IntelliJ will also go open source.

well, it allready is free for open source developers.

read more at http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/opensource/

Re:Borland is realizing what IBM did

[(H)elix1]

Building value added plugins for a popular IDE (Eclipse) and people might pay more money

Isn't that the truth. IBM jumped into Eclipse with WSAD, then moved to the Eclipse 3 core with Rational Application Developer. I found myself in the unfortunate position of needing the current cut of RAD for the portal toolkit plugin for WPS 5.1 - only to find they want over 4k for the 'value add'. Lots of extras in there like the modeling tools, none of which I needed...

The EJB stuff is slowly working its way into Eclipse, which seems to me where most of these guys were trying to make their money. Even Netbeans had an 'enterprise' version for a couple grand if you wanted to do anything more than JavaBeans and JSP. It amazes me how long it took before things like My Eclipse plug-ins that give EJB tools for $30 a year - looking forward to more and more of these tools becoming commodity IDE items. Got to wonder how long IBM and others can keep charging stupid money for the plugins, however.

Re:Borland is realizing what IBM did

[boomgopher]

Interesting - thanks for the info. IDEA just fucking rocks beyond all belief. So much so that I actually paid for it, in spite of having access to a full keygen.

(BTW, use antialiased Andale Mono font for the editor.. looks so good...)

Re:Borland is realizing what IBM did

[Trejkaz]

The gap isn't as narrow as you say. IDEA performs a lot better (and faster) than Eclipse.

Re:Borland is realizing what IBM did

[MemoryDragon]

It really depends, I can see stuff like ORM mappers and simple JSF ides going down the budget router within a two years timeframe (at least they will become affordable for small developers) Stuff like EJB sane Corba and Soap handling will be expensive much longer. But the price will drop for this stuff. Integrated good case tools will be the last ones which will drop in price. So it is safe to say, the current enterprise stuff will remain at least for another 2-3 years on a really high price level.

Although I love myeclipse for its price feature ratio, I can see the real higher value of real enterprise IDEs. I would love to have a tool which does the hibernate JSF mapping, I would love to have a good graphical mapper between DB and Database classes, I would love to have a good integrated case tool. All this stuff is achievable on a budget with meta data compilers and build files, but you spend much more time to get things rolling by simply buying one of the big enterprise ides.

I think this is good news.

[ocularDeathRay]

I always liked borland's C/C++ IDE, although I never got much chance to use jbuilder. When I was going to the local community college the first time around, they gave us a choice to use either borland or MS IDEs. I always used borland... Then a couple years and a couple jobs later I was back at the same school to find that only MS IDEs were supported. By then it didn't matter cause I was using linux at home and did all my homework in vim with gcc.

Re:Which one is better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used JBuilder since version 1.0 and i've recently started using Eclipse. The main difference between the two is the learning curve. It's really easy to create a web/j2ee/swing application in JBuilder, while it is a lot less easy to get going with Eclipse. Plain Eclipse is not really suited for real development: you need several other plugins (such as myeclipseide.com) for it to be useful.

The main reason for Borland to shift the focus to Eclipse is that it takes a *lot* of work to develop/maintain the basic functionality of an IDE. Look at CVS integration for example. It comes "free" with Eclipse, and is way better than what JBuilder offers. Eclipse offers a free base platform on which Borland can create & market proprietary plugins for enterprise development (this is what IBM does and what Oracle is moving to). It'll be interesting to see how commercial plugins will compete with OSS ones.

big deal

[b17bmbr]

jbuilder is a bloated piece of crap. it was pretty good somewhere around version 5 or 6, but since that time, you need damn near a cray to run it. what pisses me off the most is that you can't get older versions. viva la open source!! it also shows how much better the OSS dev model is than the closed version. jbuilder just doesn't hold candle to netbeans or eclipse. to get the same functionality, you had to spend hundreds for the pro or ent. version. i personally use jedit for most of my development, but i am not working on huge projects.

Brief keybindings...

[Garion911]

If it gets me Brief keybindings in Eclipse, I'm all for it!

Re:Brief keybindings...

[cratermoon]

That's just about the only thing that comes to mind the JBuilder base edition would bring to Eclipse that it doesn't already have, and do better. In any case, having used JBuilder for a long while before switching to Eclipse (and having a brief fling with IntelliJ IDEA), I really don't see myself switching back to the Borland/Inprise "experience". If the Register got the story right, which some are questioning. It wouldn't surprise me if there already were a plugin for Brief keybindings.

Open? I sure hope so....MAYA!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Companies are starting to learn that most components of their programs can be released in a free/open-source format (especially the file format) and then you can sell a more complex version with the real things that give your product value added on top of that."

Open Source MAYA!

Re:Open? I sure hope so....MAYA!

[ZephyrXero]

You should give Blender a try...

What do you want to open source today?-Hell!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Anything from MS people would like to see open sourced?"

Clippy!

Re:What do you want to open source today?-Hell!

[SnprBoB86]

No need! I've reverse engineered it for you:

// clippy.cpp

int main()
{
while (1)
annoyUser();
}

What the hell is eclipse?

[autopr0n]

I'm sorry. I'm so confused right now. Jbuilder is an IDE, and Eclipse is an ide, right? Or is it a "platform SDK"? How does one release something "Onto" eclipse? Does that mean Eclipse is like sourceforge somehow? blah, why can't people be more obvious about what they're doing.

Re:What the hell is eclipse?

[pringlis]

Eclipse is, at the very base, a platform. All but the most basic functionality (including the Java Development Environment which most people associate with Eclipse) is supplied by plug-ins. Users can create plug-ins to associate with the Eclipse work bench or any other Eclipse plug-in.

Basically to realease something "onto" Eclipse means that it is released as a plug-in for Eclipse. JBuilder provides functionality into the Eclipse platform which users can utilise.

license?

[ghee22]

what license is this under? it's not in TFA... nor is this piece of news even on their website

argh..

[Anonymous Coward]

I just bought the Enterprise Edition...

Borland is realizing what IBM did-Hiring MS.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Eclipse and Netbeans are both excellent IDE's that other platforms can only dream off."

Lisp and Smalltalk can do better.

Re:Borland is realizing what IBM did-Hiring MS.

[MemoryDragon]

I have yet to see a lisp and smalltalk IDE which beats a good eclipse-plugins combination. Sorry, but Smalltalk could have been what Java nowadays is, if the Smalltalk vendors would not have shot themselves out of the market by buying themselves off and then telling half of their customer base to go for greaner pastures... (I am talking about the Digitalk - Parcplace fiasko, which basically killed the entire Smalltalk market within one year)

JBuilder + Eclipse = ?

[skwirlmaster]

Well in my experience both are rather slow IDEs. So maybe we can get one that is twice is slow, wouldn't that be a great step forward?

Honestly though eclipse is a good tool, maybe borland moving Jbuilder to it will actually speed up the environment.

If anyone has any tricks to speed up the JVM so it doesn't drag ass I'd appreciate it being posted.

As a side note, anyone else come across the old WOW32.dll access problem @ hex address problem recently? It has something to do with how the Borland C++ accessed windows. I was surprised when working on a computer to come across this. All you need is to upgrade Win2k to SP3 or better. Sad really, the admin of the system must have been sleeping for a couple years. Easy money, so no complaints.

Re:JBuilder + Eclipse = ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you run an old 16-bit version of Borland C++ (say 4.52) ontop of Windows 2000 then you'll get a WOW violation when your mouse hovers over a system menu icon (min, max, restore) due to Win 2K providing tooltips. The solution is to disable a registry entry, or possibily upgrade to a later SP. (Or run XP...)

Re:JBuilder + Eclipse = ?

[kannibal_klown]

The last 2 versions of JBuilder I ran were 9 and X, and yes they were slow. My friend says 2005 is a little quicker, but I find it hard to believe.

Eclipse, however, has never appeared slow to me. The SWT API makes it a lot faster than Swing and it doesn't look too shabby either.

Re:JBuilder + Eclipse = ?

[mark_lybarger]

If anyone has any tricks to speed up the JVM so it doesn't drag ass I'd appreciate it being posted.

get a modern machine with plenty of ram. seriously, you're developing java applications. you want a machine with a gig of ram, and a modern processor. use your old p2 machine w/ 256M ram for surfing the internet and maybe a little word processing.

Incorrect News

[Anonymous Coward]

Theregister is inccorect.

Posted by Borland Developer Relation at borland.public.delphi.non-technical newsgroup
or
http://newsgroups.borland.com/cgi-bin/dnewsweb?cmd =article&group=borland.public.delphi.non-technical &item=490600&utag=.

Taking that information and stating that "JBuilder is now open source" is extremely irresponsible, in addition to being plain wrong.

Re:Incorrect News

[Anonymous Coward]

John Kaster is a Borland employee. What makes you think he knows what's going on when Borland management is a hopelessly confused bunch of dimwits running around in circles?

Re:Incorrect News

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think John Kaster does not know about it?

btw, I am not Borland employee. It always amazes me how people outside of the company think they know better than the people inside the company.

Which one is better?-Free or free?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It'll be interesting to see how commercial plugins will compete with OSS ones."

Once we've copied them...not well.

Re:Which one is better?-Free or free?

[mrlpz]

They've been doing quite well. The #1 GUI Designer for Eclipse-based applications is $299 and I and another fellow recently used it ( it was the only extra plugin we used ) to produce an SWT-based Rich GUI application. We used eclipse to create a middle-ware layer to our backend systems, and frankly.

Re:Which one is better?

[gaygeek]

IntelliJ IDEA is better than either. I have used JBuilder extensively at work and although Borland tries to add features that other IDEs have (refactoring tools, web module, code folding), they just don't get it right. For example, there is no way to fold all methods in class with a keystroke, or to specify rule for what should be folded by default. The refactoring tools don't work in JBuilder unless the classes compile--no such annoying restrictions exist in IntelliJ. Web module support in JBuilder is awkward and cannot be used easily with a tool they don't specifically support like JRun, where IntelliJ has generic server support. I haven't used Eclipse enough to compare.

Re:Slightly Off Topic

[johnjaydk]

I mean if someone can write a good Java app to do development, why can't they write a good app to do anything else? Most all of them tend to be bloated, slow, and have an ugly UI.

We're busy with the IDE's at the moment can you call back later ... much later ?

mental note: send email to borland

[Anonymous Coward]

"dear borland, you can check ebay for a gps with digital compass, you indeed have lost the track and can get lost forever".

Re:Which one is better?

[varag]

In my job, we used JBuilder up to (and including) JBuilder X. However, the enterprise version of JBuilder is prohibitively expensive. We evaluated Eclipse and found that adding the plugins for JBOSS IDE and XDoclet gave us enough functionality to enable us to switch for the majority of our development work. However, we still keep a copy of JBuilder X for Swing development, which (obviously) is not very good in Eclipse.

One of the intriguing aspects of Eclipse is the rich client platform, which has the potential of becoming a cornerstone of client development for enterprise systems.

Re:Which one is better?

[omicronish]

Can anyone provide a good explaination as to which they prefere, Eclipse or Borland? Are they more or less clones of one another, or do real differences exist?

I've used both for a research project. Bottom-line: JBuilder is absolutely terrible, Eclipse is great. I'm actually a C#/Visual Studio guy, so I can make comparisons with that as well :)

What makes JBuilder so terrible is its non-native GUI. The thing just looks bad with its GUI that's almost Win32, but not quite. Ctrl+Tab doesn't switch between code panes as you would expect in any Windows app; instead it uselessly switches between panes such as Project and Structure. If you Alt+Tab back into the app, it goes into menu mode so as soon as you start typing it executes menu commands. But by far the absolute worse was its ignorance of Windows' ClearType setting for font smoothing. I have a laptop running at high resolution, and code in JBuilder looked absolutely harsh to my eyes. It was bad enough that I started typing Java code in J# for a while just to get ClearType. There are other GUI differences but I'm a horribly nit-picky person when it comes to UI, so they probably won't bother normal people (menus are too wide, menu selections are rendered in an odd manner, etc.)

Eclipse, in comparison, doesn't have these problems. The UI works fine, none of the weirdass UI quirks of JBuilder, and it even respects my font smoothing settings. It also looks very nice, and there are a ton of configuration options. In fact, there are a bit too many, or they're organized in a slightly messy fashion (I recall seeing font color configuration in 3 different places). But it's not bad if you get used to it, so it's probably just that I'm unfamiliar with Eclipse. One thing I really like is its Software Update option. Turns out Eclipse doesn't come with a visual designer for Java, but you can install one pretty easily from inside Eclipse. Eclipse also has refactoring capabilities.

Both JBuilder and Eclipse feel slightly sluggish and can take quite a while to start in comparison to Visual Studio. (I know someone's going to say Eclipse is fast for them. I don't care what you say; it feels slower than VS to me). VS 2002/2003 lack refactoring capabilities for any of the languages it supports, but 2005 will have refactoring for the .NET ones. I think Eclipse might be more configurable than VS in terms of code formatting, but I'm not entirely sure. The rest of the differences that matter to me deal with the languages (Java/C#), which shows how nice both GUI's are: for the most part they don't get in my way, which lets me concentrate on coding.

To summarize, go with Eclipse if you're doing Java development. Avoid JBuilder at all costs, although I'm curious if anyone else has had the same experiences as me?

Open Source is not going to save Borland

[aCapitalist]

Eclipse has made the Java IDE market a commodity market. The best they can hope for is to become much smaller and sell value-added plugins. I bought the vi-plugin for Eclipse, but that model won't work for a company the current size of Borland.

But hey, if Borland dies then maybe MS will do what they've always really wanted to do, which is to give away VS for free. VS2005 beta2 rocks.

Re:Open Source is not going to save Borland

[aCapitalist]

I should've added that I'm sure Intellij is worried about Eclipse too, but made a smart move by instead of trying to compete directly with VS.NET they leveraged their expertise and produced a kickass addin for VS2003.

Re:Open Source is not going to save Borland

[Jason Earl]

Which basically means that Borland is doing market research for Microsoft for the next version of Visual Studio. The easiest way to find out what your customers want is to simply borrow the ideas that some of them were paying good money for in the previous version.

When VS 2005 (or whatever) comes out, what do you bet that it has most of the more popular Borland features.

What business model is that?

[Renegade Lisp]

From the article:

"We will give customers something that's differentiated in the market and do it with a lot less investment on our part," Fuller said.

So, in effect, he's saying: We let others do the basic work for us, and then make money by adding stuff on top of what they create.

Granted, this may be the same thing IBM is doing with Eclipse, it's just that you seldom hear it voiced so clearly and unmistakably.

As an open source/free software developer, I would think twice before contributing to such a code base -- I guess I'll end up doing it anyway, because like the sorcerer's apprentice, the power of unleashed free software development is already overturning the business model of these companies in a far greater extent than they seem to be prepared for, but still... it doesn't feel quite right to help a company in the short run maintaining a business model which I explicitly declined, when I became a free software developer.

The future is not in selling proprietary software; the future is in selling services for free software. IBM, for one thing, seems to have grasped that simple truth better than Borland, but I guess they are still learning.

Re:What business model is that?

[aCapitalist]

The future is not in selling proprietary software; the future is in selling services for free software. IBM, for one thing, seems to have grasped that simple truth better than Borland, but I guess they are still learning.

That's what FSF extremists wish the model will be, but if the software is doing its job then there should be little need for "services".

The future is really proprietary software leveraging the bottom of the software stack which is free. Proprietary software can give back by making contributions to these lower layers of the software stack, by maintaining a sane business model by offering value added proprietary software at the higher ends of the stack.

Re:What business model is that?

[Renegade Lisp]

That's what FSF extremists wish the model will be, but if the software is doing its job then there should be little need for "services".

Funny how using the word "free" in connection with "software" gets you labelled as an "FSF extremist" immediately, but I can live with that :-) (ok you didn't label me an extremist :-)

I make most of my money by deploying and customizing free software in large companies, and boy, I know for sure this kind of job is gonna be needed for a long time. It's not a function of how good the software is, how well it is doing it's job, but mostly of the complexity of the companies where it's being used. No, I don't see "services" going away anytime soon, unless we have software with artificial intelligence that deploys itself where it's needed and adapts itself to what it's needed for.

The future is really proprietary software leveraging the bottom of the software stack which is free. Proprietary software can give back by making contributions to these lower layers of the software stack, by maintaining a sane business model by offering value added proprietary software at the higher ends of the stack.

Here you are simply saying the opposite of what I said. Any reasons that would turn it into a valid argument? Why should it be so? If free software development is capable of taking over the lower levels, why should it stop there? Is it not an uphill battle for proprietary software vendors?

Re:What business model is that?

[aCapitalist]

Here you are simply saying the opposite of what I said. Any reasons that would turn it into a valid argument? Why should it be so? If free software development is capable of taking over the lower levels, why should it stop there? Is it not an uphill battle for proprietary software vendors?

OSX

Do you see games going open source anytime soon? The only reason why there is a quality open source java IDE like Eclipse is because IBM has deep pockets. Don't expect everybody to follow IBM's lead.

Open source is good at some infrastructural things and horrible at other things, such as polish, documentation, and other desktop issues.

eclipse is still the best windows cvs software

[krunk4ever]

Look at CVS integration for example. It comes "free" with Eclipse, and is way better than what JBuilder offers.

i've personally tried a round of window cvs software include WinCvs and TurtoiseCVS and I've gotta say both were incomparable to Eclipse. I don't know why there hasn't been a easier CVS software, or maybe it's because I'm not looking hard enough. That said, even if I'm building software on Visual Studio or another IDE, I would still use Eclipse to refresh the directory and synchronize with the repository.

If anyone knows of any better free CVS software out there, I'm all ears!

Re:eclipse is still the best windows cvs software

[Dan-DAFC]

Try SmartCVS, it's the best CVS client I've used by some distance.

Re:eclipse is still the best windows cvs software

[krunk4ever]

interesting! thanks! stupid google. returning wincvs and turtoisecvs as the most popular. cant rely on them anymore. hehe.

looking at the screenshots, it is exactly what i want a cvs software to do.

Re:eclipse is still the best windows cvs software

[thammoud]

Bite your tongue!!!! A good looking Java Swing app?

Re:eclipse is still the best windows cvs software

[alder]

Screenshots give out a very strong "smell" of Eclipse ;-)

Java

[Mark_MF-WN]

I think you see this more with some languages than others. Interpreted and VM languages, like Java, Perl, and Python, have a tendency to be extremely open. I believe this stems at least partly from the difficulty of concealing the sources of such languages -- even when compiled to a byte code of some kind, applications written in them still tend to be quite easy to disassemble. Compare that to C++, which is difficult to disassemble; it's much easier to conceal source.

As a result, languages like Perl, Python, and Java have a strong tradition of OSS licensing, and C/C++ less so.

That's just my impression of the industry though from my own interaction with the Python, C++, and Java communities; don't take this as some attempt to be the moses of language-politics. :)

Re:Java

[Renegade Lisp]

applications written in [Java] still tend to be quite easy to disassemble. Compare that to C++, which is difficult to disassemble; it's much easier to conceal source.

I don't think concealing the source is the most important point in the propietary model. The question is whether people are allowed to disassemble the object code, and whether they may do anything with the results, legally.

For example, Sun had no problem putting its SDK code in public display (a zip file included in every SDK), yet provide it under a license that would forbid anyone actually using what they saw in Sun's code in their own software.

It's very hard to keep anything really secret if you do give binary code away. Black-box re-engineering can do amazing things, even in C/C++.

The point is, really, what do you allow users to do with the code. The legal framework of copyright, and the means to enforce it, are so powerful today that you don't actually need to conceal the code to keep people from using it.

And the portion of real "trade secrets" that you don't want your competitors to see in your code tends to be very small in any given software system, probably zero in most of them.

Re:Java

[Jicksta]

I agree with your point, but I also feel there is a strong demographic attraction to the languages you mentioned for the more "free spirited" programmers who branch off from industry standards and try out new, interesting things.

Perhaps the respective language's own unique personality causes its community to grow with and gain open source programmers and evangelists...

Just a thought... :)

Re:Java

[Anonymous Coward]

Java and all its libraries are not open source.

C/C++ and their associated libraries have all been implemented as open source.

I don't understand your argument.

Re:Java

[Hard_Code]

Or stated another way: code which is easy to create has a low cost of "opening". If you spent a lot of effort writing and debugging the code, you may be less inclined to "give away" all that effort.

Re:Java

[Mark_MF-WN]

Well, I'd be a fool to discount the language's "personality" -- otherwise, there'd probably be enormous ADA and Eiffel communities. Perfectly good languages that just didn't have the right flavour to build up the kind of super-following that languages like Python enjoy and benefit so tremendously from.

Re:Java

[linguae]

I agree with your comments about Perl and Python, but I strongly disagree with your comments about Java and openness. Java isn't open source at all; it is shared source. What this means is that even though the source to the Java SDK is available for free (as in beer) to Sun, you can't really do anything with the source outside of the SDK, and once you look at the source, you're tainted from working for some of the other Java implementations, such as Kaffe and gcj.

I don't find C and C++ to be closed much at all. Remember that C, C++, and by extension, Unix all had the Bell Labs tradition, where they were (for the first so many years) "open" to anyone that can afford the licenses. Now, after the divesture and AT&T got more control of Unix, things started becoming very closed. But years later, we get BSD, Linux, and GNU utilities (gcc being, IMO, the most important; I don't think FOSS would have prospered as much if developers didn't have a FOSS compiler). Because of C/C++ and Unix's tradition of openness, and because of the developments of BSD, Linux, and GNU, C/C++ seems very open to me.

Don't get me wrong, I like Java. Java is a lot of things. Open isn't one of them.

Re:Java

[cafard]

Indeed, Java is not as 'open' as Perl/Python, if only for the licensing of the original sdk fron Sun. Still, all the language specs are open and documented, and patent grants apply to allow anyone to implement a jvm and distribute it.

The Java situation looks a lot like the old C situation, don't you think? With the progress of gcj, GNU Classpath and Kaffe, free base classes are becoming a reality. On the JVM front, both Kaffe and SableVM also provide nice portability and functionality. Sure, it's not yet the 'real thing', but i have very good hopes for Java becoming a real "no strings attached" language for the F/OSS community.

Re:Java

[willCode4Beer.com]

After reading some of the other responses to your post I'm going to throw MHO out.
Assuming by open-ness, you mean stuff written in the language.

I think it has more to do with the nature of the language. The "new skool" interpreted languages allow for cross platform development. This means a larger pool of developers will be writing code. You don't see a lot of open source smalltalk and VB.

Also, these languages tend to have a shorter learning curve. This means more people will spend the time to learn before giving up. Also increaing the developer pool.

Just my thoughts

Re:similar experiences with C++ Builder

[g2ek]

my experience with Borlands C++ Builder is similar. i'm forced to use it at work, and it's the crapiest comercial software i've used ever. the editor ends up deleting parts of your code for whatever reason, the gui editor is everything less intuitive, access violations every now and then. most of my co-workers share my opinion that using C++ Builder was the worst decision managment took in the project. if at least it were FOSS we'd have the possibility to fix the most crappy stuff, but as it isn't we can only desesperate or hope to change to an other environment (maybe qt?) in the future

Kylix?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thought it was dead - hadn't been updates in years iirc.

Re:Which one is better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. JBuilder is the "official" IDE for my Java programming class and it absolutely sucks balls. Almost everything about it is counter-intuitive.

I use VS.Net in my day job and it really is that rare case of a Microsoft product that is really good. OK, its not perfect but at least I can get work done on it unlike JBuilder where I spend more time arguing with the IDE than I do coding.

couldn't agree more

[g2ek]

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=147131&cid= 12325137

Re:similar experiences with C++ Builder

[windex]

If you are using C++ builder enterprise, you have the source to the interface. It's entirely implimented in VCL, and the VCL source is included. If it crashes, it's because an underlying VCL component is broke. :)

Not that I like BCB, but when forced to develop on win32 where cygwin won't do, it's at the top of my list compared to MSVS.

Re:Which one is better?

[killjoe]

What's interesting is that Eclipse refactoring, debugging etc are language independent. There are plug ins for ruby, php, python etc that are all pretty nice.

It's a nice platform that you can use to code virtually any language.

Micrsoft Fish !

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a nice piece of software that ran on Windows - it made your computer look like a fish tank.

1) It just worked (tm)

2) It was easy to use

3) It never crashed.

I think Microsoft should go back to their roots and look at quality products like Fish - if there were more fish in their products today the IT world would be a nicer place

Re:Which one is better?

[mark_lybarger]

a mac user perhaps?

intellij may have a nice IDE (i've honestly never tried it due to having to register just to try it out), but when there's free/open alternatives, guess which one the developer will choose to learn. intellij offers no transferable skills in the marketplace. if someone knows how to use eclipse/netbeans to build software applications, they're able to easily fit into nearly any development team.

jbuilder was the defacto standard up to about jbuilder 6. after that sun/ibm have released some really useable open source alternatives.

I am Skeptical of Borland

[syntap]

Wasn't Borland the company that promised to open-source its database project Interbase, then basically withdrew it and left and old build for independent development that thankfully someone took on (IBPhoenix)?

They received their public praise from the open-source community, then began taking it all back gradually, having "certified" builds and then gave up altogether and made it a closed, proprietary, and expensive product again.

Re:I am Skeptical of Borland

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect they were testing the fiscal soundness of opensource software. They (management) thought they could make money on support and or trainging and found out they couldn't. So.. they did the logical thing and took thier $$ out of opensource and put it back in proprietary format where it could make (some) money for them.
Although I'm a fan of open source projects like Linux or Perl or GNU that show that a few bright people can do amazing things. I'm becoming more skeptical of larger open source projects like Apache and Eclipse because once they kill the comercial competition (after they are Free (like free beer) and "good enough") innovation slows down a whole lot.

Borland has entirely lost its credibility

[hobuddy]

Borland has a history of contradictory and self-defeating behavior in many areas, but especially with regard to open source, and even in closed source support for the Linux platform.

First of all, renaming a large, long-established company (to Inprise), then reverting to Borland screams "our once-famous brand has become irrelevant, so we're launching ham-handed, ill-considered reinvention attempts".

In 2000, with about nine months of preparatory fanfare, they released the source to their database engine, Interbase, under a Mozilla-style license. Soon thereafter, they abandoned open source Interbase and closed the product again.

An independent open source offshoot from the Interbase source code (Firebird) is doing fairly well, but in the course of that whole debacle, Borland managed to look both mean-spirited and incompetent.

Then they released Kylix (essentially a Linux port of Delphi) after months of hype, subsequently decided that desktop Linux was irrelevant, and cast it adrift.

In the early days of the .NET platform, Borland even released a version of Delphi that lacked the ability to compile to native code, which they subsequently decided to restore.

Those of us who've been observing Borland throughout all this expect them to maintain about as steady a course as a carload of squabbling thirteen-year-olds who just stole a car and a case of beer. The opening of JBuilder will be no different.

Re:Borland has entirely lost its credibility

[Teckla]

Borland is now a rather small fish in a sea of much bigger fish. I think they still have a chance to shine, though I'm not sure their management is smart enough to see the opportunities around them.

Between IntelliJ's IDEA, Eclipse, and Sun's NetBeans, all that's left is scraps. I think Borland should realize this and start exiting the Java IDE market. It's saturated.

They still have a lot of good compiler technology up their sleeves. Borland should get into markets that aren't saturated, and at the same time, should try to leverage what they already have. I'm willing to bet writing a Perl compiler, Python compiler, and Ruby compiler would be pretty lucrative. (By compiler, I mean something that produces native executables.) I know a lot of Perl/Python/Ruby hackers that would love to take their "scripting language" to the "next level" by having access to compilers that would produce native executables on Windows, *nix, and MacOS X.

Ah well, just some random babbling... Borland can still make a bright future for itself, but not in markets like Java IDEs.

Re:Borland has entirely lost its credibility

[Anonymous Coward]

You couldn't write a Python or Ruby compiler because they are dynamic languages (like LISP), not static (like C). I don't know if Perl is dynamic or static. But basically you can't do what you're asking for and your babbleing was infact random.

So... Borland cannot make a bright future for itself here.

Re: Mods on crack - again!

[tomhudson]

To the idiot who modded my original post that it means Borland is dying as a troll, you obviously didn't read the fucking article

From the VERY FIRST LINE of TFA:

Borland Software is releasing code from its core JBuilder integrated development environment (IDE) into the Eclipse open source community after a surprise drop in first-quarter sales.

... and further on ...

Earnings per share (EPS) came in at half their total for the same period last year, on 3 cents. The company said it closed its lowest number of deals worth more than $1m for six quarters.

It's been dying for a year and a half.

</rant>

Here, I'll put it in a form even YOU can understand:

<troll>

It is official; the market confirms: Borland is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Borland community when both the market and multiple slashdot posters confirmed that Borland mindshare has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all coders. Coming on the heels of financial results which plainly states that Borland has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Borland is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in market.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Borland's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Borland faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Borland because Borland is dying. Things are looking very bad for Borland. As many of us are already aware, Borland continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

JBuilder is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Borland developers through opensourcing JBuilder only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Borland is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Due to the troubles of Inprise, abysmal sales and so on, Inprise gave up and went back to doing business as Borland; they open-sourced another troubled product, InterBase. Now InterBase is also dead. So is Kylix. Same with dBASE and WordPerfect, their corpses turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that Borland has steadily declined in market share. Borland is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Borland is to survive at all it will be among code dilettante dabblers. Borland continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Borland is dead.

</troll>

Borland used to OWN the compiler market - 2/3 of all compilers sold were from Borland. They used to make software that was not just good - it was GREAT! But now they suck.

Re:Which one is better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed 100%.

Re:Which one is better?

[Anonymous Coward]

You make in interesting comment about IBM using Eclipse. But they recently pulled out of Eclipse.org and decided to take development of their WebSphere Application Developer back in-house. Why would they do except for two possible reasons: (1) the Eclipse core is difficult to build on, or (2) they don't agree with the politics involved in developing the Eclipse core.

If the reason is (1), they wouldn't be using it as the base for their own product, WSAD, would they? So that leaves reason (2). Are the politics surrounding changes to Eclipse such that IBM feels they can't control the process enough? Do they want to control it?

What other reasons can you think of for IBM to pull out of Eclipse?

GUI rad tools for linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used most of the major ones, including the borland tools, and although Visual Studio is probably the best, it's only "the best" if you can afford it (and only need to use or support windows). With all the bells and whistles all these tools (the enerprise editions or whatever) get very expensive, very fast.

Since my customer gets all source code with the binaries, I use Qt Designer (ships with fedora). True, it's just C++/C, but the object model is trivially easy to use, fully documented, and has lots of example source code.

Not only does the Qt Designer GUI RAD tool work well, it's trivial to modify the Qt Assistant xml configuration files for use as a general help tool.

TrollTech has done a great job on these tools, and they are sorely underrated. Qt 4.0 is supposedly going to be GPL, I'm not sure if the windows version will still be "for pay" or not at that point.

What are you talking about? Eclipse does work.

[SpecialAgentXXX]

Plain Eclipse is not really suited for real development: you need several other plugins (such as myeclipseide.com) for it to be useful.

The only other (free) plug-in that we use is SQLExplorer. We use Eclipse for enterprise-level J2EE development for Java source, JSPs, etc. Yes, "plain Eclipse" is very much suited for real development.

Hope that includes Togethersoft! (UML)

[Salamanders]

Togethersoft was (and still is) an amazing tool for roud-trip UML modelling in Java - you update the model, the code updates. You update the code, and the model updates. Never out of synch, and a pleasure to use. JBuilder soaked up TogetherSoft, and if it makes it into Eclipse, that would really fill the gap of good UML support in Eclipse.

Re:Hope that includes Togethersoft! (UML)

[DrEasy]

There already is a Together plug-in for Eclipse: it's called the TogetherJ Eclipse Edition.

Re:Hope that includes Togethersoft! (UML)

[Salamanders]

But it is very (5g I think?) un-free-as-in-beer.

Re:Hope that includes Togethersoft! (UML)

[DrEasy]

You shouldn't expect a free plug-in from Togethersoft! Omondo's plug-in is free for academic use. I haven't tried it yet though, as to get the academic license you need to jump through a few hoops.

Re:Which one is better?

[FatherOfONe]

You must be a UI guy...

JBuilder is terrible because you didn't like the UI? I can understand if you didn't "like" it because of the UI, or in your case a few specific things in the UI, but to rate it as terrible is an overstatement.

Now I use JDeveloper (built off of JBuilder by Oracle) and Eclipse. I can say that JDeveloper flat out rocks. I did use Jbuilder 3.x and also found it very good.

The issue is this.
Most Java IDE's will run on multiple platforms because they are written in Java. Written in Java comes has it's pro's and cons. It will probably launch a little slower than and require more RAM, BUT.... it will easily run on multiple plaforms. The other issue with all the proprietary Java IDE's is that there is now a "good enough" open source IDE (Eclipse). It will be very very difficult for them to compete. It is my opinion that Eclipse will become the defacto IDE for Java development. Unfortunatly some very good IDEs for Java will go away (Jdeveloper, JBuilder, Visual Cafe etc)

Now as far as Microsoft goes. I personally hate the way it runs on Linux and the Macintosh. It is so buggy that the thing won't even launch :-) You would think that an IDE that cost that much money would work great. :-)

Now my opinion is this for the future.
1. Eclipse will be the IDE of choice for Java development, and as such many vendors will add features to it via the plugins. MyEclipse being the main plugin. The rate of development will be huge over the next 5 years on Eclipse.

2. Microsoft developers will use whatever Microsoft gives them. They will generally only seriously look at Microsoft solutions. At some point Microsoft will have to seriously consider giving away their visual studio product. It is my belief that they will use their "shared source" licence for it within the next 5 years.

Re:Which one is better?

[stuuf]

CVS integration ... is way better than what JBuilder offers

I guess I should pick up a copy of JBuilder, just to see how horrible its CVS compponent is, if it's worse than Eclipse. I've been working a school project for about 2 months, using Eclipse and CVS on a team with four other people. Of the few things i like about Eclipse, CVS is not one of them. Compared to other tools, including Emacs, Netbeans, Tkcvs, and *gasp* the cvs command line program, Eclipse is by far the least efficient for simple version control tasks (The rest of the UI is equally confusing. The GTK+ interface is noticeably faster than netbeans's swing UI, but it usually takes me twice as long to find a command).

To check in a file, I have to pop up the package explorer, find the file, right-click, select Team->Commit... as opposed to Emacs (C-c v v) or netbeans (VC submenu on the editor tab or VC toolbar)

CVS updates require way too many mouse clicks. It always asks me if I want to update from a different tag (this is rarel, if ever, done; the update command should just update the current tag without an intermediate dialog). I find the seven keystrokes required to run "cvs up" in a terminal much faster. Once the update command finishes, the output is simply discarded, making it harder to see what files were patched, modified, conflict, etc. Occasionally it will say that a resource is out of sync, and command me to perform a refresh. God knows why it can't refresh automatically, or why the refresh is even necessary in the first place.

The one good thing i've noticed about Eclipse is the "Share project" command, which simplifies the import/checkout sequence. And two more complaints: it doesn't supprot local CVS repositories (I hav to do loopback ssh) or other version control system (RCS, subversion, etc.)

Re: Mods on crack - again!

[Anonymous Coward]

To the idiot who modded my original post that it means Borland is dying as a troll, you obviously didn't read the fucking article

You mean, the article that posted a lot of misinformation? With a false sensacionalist headline?

Borland had announced that it was expecting sales of JBuilder to drop. They dropped more than expected. Even so, they announced a profit:

Borland Posts Profit Despite Warning

It's been dying for a year and a half.

They've been saying that for twenty years actually, and it is still far from being true.

Re:Which one is better?

[xtracto]

At some point Microsoft will have to seriously consider giving away their visual studio product. It is my belief that they will use their "shared source" licence for it within the next 5 years.

I am pretty shure you are wrong, I think what Microsoft would do (if ever they let any kind of free-nes in VS) is to give away a free (as in beer) Version. They will never, EVER give the code (not even in their shared shit^W^W^Wource).

As for the plugins? I have used the Whole Tomato Visual Assist plugin, and I think that is the way MS will solve it, publishing an API for VS plugin development.

Re:Which one is better?

[SimonInOz]

I have used JBuilder (and Delphi [released 1995] - and even Turbo Pascal [released 1983]) from version 1.0 [1997].

It has served me well.

What's the coolest part - well, surely it's the GUI editor. You can built a decent swing gui and actually have it work - and there's no crap comments in your code.
Swing is - I reckon [and yes, I have built swing components] - seriously user unfriendly to build. JBuilder does it well. (Not perfectly, and some of its reverse engineering attempts are pretty woeful - but it's hard).

The gui builder in Eclipse is nowhere near as sophisticated. Last time I looked it puts comments in the code and was generally pretty clunky.

Minds you, as soon as that component is sorted out I'm probably jumping ship. Sorry Borland - you've served me well (and taken my money) for 20+ years. I look forward to seeing your new business model (and spare me Imprise - or was it Inprise, I never did manage to remember)

Simon in Sydney

Shareware vs. Free Software

[CarpetShark]

components of their programs can be released in a free/open-source format (especially the file format) and then you can sell a more complex version with the real things

Hmm. That sounds more like a shareware model to me. Free Software usually sells optional, non-software extras like 24-hour tech support, consultancy, or installation.

Re:Shareware vs. Free Software

[ZephyrXero]

How do you sell tech support for a video game (not counting MMORPGs)? The support model only works for certain kinds of software, not all.

Re:Shareware vs. Free Software

[CarpetShark]

True to an extent, but with that sort of stuff, people are willing to buy game guides (a form of tech. support, I suppose), and merchandise like T-Shirts with a game logo, etc. There are also opportunities for innovation there, like perhaps letting someone buy an official T-Shirt with their highscore on it. A model becomes invalid when it is proven not to work, not when it hasn't been fully tried yet. Many companies are successful this way.

Re:Which one is better?

[maxgilead]

To check in a file, I have to pop up the package explorer, find the file, right-click, select Team->Commit...

Right-click on a file, Team->Commit -- three clicks

CVS updates require way too many mouse clicks. It always asks me if I want to update from a different tag (this is rarel, if ever, done; the update command should just update the current tag without an intermediate dialog).

And, normally, it does. You must be using some special command for that to happen.

Once the update command finishes, the output is simply discarded, making it harder to see what files were patched, modified, conflict, etc.

You can find complete log in Console tab.

Occasionally it will say that a resource is out of sync, and command me to perform a refresh. God knows why it can't refresh automatically, or why the refresh is even necessary in the first place.

Because when working in a team, you may not want updates to be pulled automatically for whatever reason (eg. review, known temporary incompatibility with local version...). Frankly, I'd never use a tool which would update from repository automatically, that's scary idea.

Summarizing: learn your tool before complaining.

Re:Which one is better?

[mrlpz]

creating GUI application in JBuilder has become progressively harder and harder ( even NetBeans was easier to use ). The only two plugin products I would see necessity of are WindowsBuilderPro ( for SWT/Swing development ), Jigloo ( if you're looking for a less expensive alternative to GUI building ), and MyEclipse for Web/J2EE development.

The only thing is that a Web UI server side code designer ( ala WebMatrix, or VS.NET with ASP.NET ) is still kind of lacking. There is a one ultra-thin client solution, but the company who makes it has chosen to price their product into the stratosphere, and I wouldn't recommend it for anyone trying to start up development on a reasonable budget.

Re:Which one is better?

[mrlpz]

Then you didn't look deep enough. Take a look at either of these two:

www.cloudgarden.com ( Jigloo...$75 ! )
www.instantiations.com ( WindowsBuilderPro $299, with less expensive versions for just SWT or just SWING at $199 each ).

I am NOT a representative of either company, however, I am a developer who's developed an Eclipse-workbench based RCP ( Rich Client Platform ) application using SWT, and I can tell you first hand. It is A LOT easier to develop a Java UI heavy application under Eclipse with EITHER of these plugins, versus NetBean, IntelliJ, OR JBuilder ( all of which I either have or have used in the past )...

I suggest you take a deeper look. You won't go back to JBuilder. I haven't.

Re:Which one is better?

[benow]

It's been a while since I used JBuilder, and use Eclipse (integration builds) daily. JBuilder came from the knowledge in Delphi, ie, good fast gui builder. Eclipse is not a gui builder (out of the box)... there are plugins which provide this functionality. The JBuilder I remember wasn't bad if you used it as intended. A bit of a quirky interface. Eclipse has such depth. From custom code formatting to macros to navigation to searching, etc. The openness of Eclipse is what makes it better than JBuilder. Find a bug? Hit up bugs.eclipse.org and it's fixed in the next release. The number of plugins is huge and the architecture of the system seems quite well done facilitating customization thru plugin building. Erm, and multi-lingual, and multi-formatting, and in-app web browsing and ... Really, it's in a different class from JBuilder, and makes a wonderful wrench (after a somewhat tougher learning curve). A while ago, I realized what a gem Eclipse was and offered to become a download mirror... my coloc box is now pushing 4TB/mo of Eclipse builds!

so where can I download the IDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where can I download Jbuilder IDE?

Re:Which one is better?

[mrlpz]

Excuse me ? What is that ? An attempt at an insult or something ? "You must be a UI guy ?" You wish, buddy, you wish.

JDeveloper is a step in the right direction, but it still, if you're focus is on ANYTHING other than creating middle-ware or EJB's, sucks rocks.

Eclipse's achilles heel is having a DataPresentation automation plugin. Those that there are, are WAY too expensive for mere mortals. However, just about anything else, I've found Eclipse is as good or better than any of the other Java IDE's.

As for VS.NET, there's always ReSharper ( from our friends who bring us IntelliJ ), or SharpFactory. I prefer ReSharper ( hint: less expensive, same features as the more expensive one ). That being said, with VS.NET 2005, the point will be moot because at least for C#, Refactoring will be built into the IDE.

VS.NET does load faster than Eclipse when bringing up a "comparable" solution ( for you M$ heads ) or workspace ( for Eclipsers ). I think that may be to Eclipse's "everything is a plugin but the workbench" OSGi approach. However, that being said, I think that that also makes Eclipse a whole lot easier to extend and repackage. Think about that when looking at either WebSphere Application Developer 5 or the new Rational AD workbench.

Re:Which one is better?

[mrlpz]

Dude.....what are you nuts ??? I've tried WinCVS, TortoiseCVS ( definitely better than WinCVS, once you have your paths/configuration set up right ), and yes...GASP the command line CVS..and I can unabashedly tell you that Eclipse's CVS support is WAY better...

Right-Click->Team->Synchronize

Is that too hard to do ? Dude...the thing even has a merge view...get in touch with the program before you bitch and moan.

Geeze if folks like this are what colleges and universities are sending out into the industry, NO WONDER salaries are dropping !

Readable version

[Anonymous Coward]

http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/23/1 753237

The future is open...

[rdean400]

The core IDE platform is something that is ludicrous to reinvent. Expending the effort to re-invent the editor, compiler, preferences, and so on, won't bring a good financial return.

Eclipse and NetBeans provide the functionality already, so the commercial IDE developer can focus their efforts on plugins that make the IDE a more productive environment. They not only get the benefit of not having to develop the core technology. They also get the benefit of integrating with other tools developed on the same platform.

The companies developing the IDE's win because they have less lines of code to write. The developers win because they can pick an IDE and then integrate with other plugins.

Re:Which one is better?

[FatherOfONe]

I spent 2 years of my life as a UI guy and I have nothing but the utmost respect for "good" UI developers and designers. The parents comments about an IDE appear to come from someone who is a UI guy. To use an analogy though; it is kinda like a mechanic saying that they don't like a wrench because it looks ugly.

JDeveloper does not suck for creating front ends. It is good for creating SWING apps and connecting them to Oracle (shocker, considering it is made by Oracle). I did prefer Visual Cafe for SWING, but JDeveloper works fine. Granted I am no fan of Oracle's BC4J, or their other proprietary stuff. However, they, and everyone appears to be moving to JSF.

As for VS.NET, you miss my point. VS.NET will NEVER run on anything BUT Windows, and probably never run well/supported on anything but the latest Microsoft OS. So if you want to "standardize" on a IDE, and some of your developers don't want to use Windows, you are SOL. Yes you can bag standarizing on VS.NET, and just use notepad with a compiler, but that isn't my point. You could use different IDEs, but then you run in to crap like one IDE creates a button different than another. Specifically one wants to create it with a default constructor, and then set all the properties and the other one creates it with a name. Then you can't use your GUI to work with the UI. That sucks.

What IDE loads the fastest.... Ummm ok I will take you word that VS.NET loads faster than other IDE's. Given that I stay in my IDE most of the day, or perhaps load it 2-3 times a day, the extra 20 seconds or so doesn't really bother me. Does it bother anyone else out there? I will say that going from 512MB of RAM to 1GIG helped me a lot, but then I like to keep Microsoft Outlook open, and it seems to take around 200-400MB of RAM.

Re:Which one is better?

[Earlybird]

• To check in a file, I have to pop up the package explorer, find the file, right-click, select Team->Commit...

Nah. Just right-click in the text editor view and select Team -> Commit from the context menu.

(This is Eclipse 3.1M6; I don't remember how long this feature has existed. Same disclaimer goes for the items below.)

And have you looked at the Team Synchronizing perspective? In this perspective you get a project-level diff between the working version and the repository; it will show outgoing and incoming modifications as well as conflicts, and it's a wonderful way to commit or update. It also supports commit sets, which let you set up the changeset without accessing the server, and then, when you're done, commit it as a whole.

• CVS updates require way too many mouse clicks. It always asks me if I want to update from a different tag (this is rarel, if ever, done; the update command should just update the current tag without an intermediate dialog).

Team -> Update will never ask for a tag; it defaults to the branch you're working on.

• Once the update command finishes, the output is simply discarded, making it harder to see what files were patched, modified, conflict, etc.

The CVS console shows this information, and the output is almost identical to that of the official CVS client. Window -> Show View -> Console, then make sure it's showing the CVS console by selecting this from the dropdown inside the view (as there are other types of consoles).

• other version control system (RCS, subversion, etc.)

While Eclipse only has CVS integration out of the box, there are third-party plugins providing support for Subversion, Perforce, ClearCase, an experimental system called Stellation, and others.

As for RCS, keep in mind that Eclipse has a powerful, and very useful, local history function that transparently maintains older versions of your source files. You can define the maximum age of this history. No commit messages or tagging, however.

Borland? Borland?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the same Borland that was widely known for preselling vaporware back in the 80's?

My girlfriend worked there, and the stories she told me... WOW.

And what a concept... preselling software acting as if it will ship A.S.A.P., while knowing full well, that it wasn't going to ship for months.

They had it down to a science, I'm amazed that they didn't get indited for it.

Re:Borland? Borland?

[MemoryDragon]

Microsoft does that as well... Microsoft sometimes even ships software which does not work...

Practicality

[Mark_MF-WN]

I don't think concealing the source is the most important point in the propietary model. The question is whether people are allowed to disassemble the object code, and whether they may do anything with the results, legally.

I don't dispute that the license is the determiner of openness -- but I think the license often follows from the practicality of keeping the source closed. It would be silly to distribute a perl script under a restrictive license, for instance. A license that hard to enforce isn't worth much, and would seem to undermine the authority of the licensor.

Black-box re-engineering can do amazing things, even in C/C++.

Yeah, but it's non-trivial. Compare that to reverse-engineering Python (in its normal non-compiled state).

The point is, really, what do you allow users to do with the code. The legal framework of copyright, and the means to enforce it, are so powerful today that you don't actually need to conceal the code to keep people from using it.

What I'm suggesting here is that the license sometimes follows from nature of the language. This is especially true outside of the US, where copyright law isn't held in godlike reverence by those in power. Sun could have chosen to keep the Java SDK sources completely hidden, but the open nature of Java encouraged them to leave the sources visible, albeit legally constrained. Granted that's a little different from Borland's magnamity here, but it's still better than what you get from some of the more notable C++ ide purveyors.

Libraries and Applications

[Mark_MF-WN]

Consider the third-party libraries and applications written in Java, and the ones written in C++.

The vast majority of software written in Java is at least shared-source, and a great deal of it is open source. C++ libraries and software, by comparison, are generally close-source. It's sometimes easy to miss that fact, steeped as we are in the world of GNU, Linux, and BSD, but keep in mind that most software is still being written for Windows operating systems and the majority of it is still closed source.

It's kind of ironic that this would be the case, given that -- as you point out -- the Sun Java API sources are only shared-source whereas the C++ standard API sources are all open. But there it is.

Re:Which one is better?

[dmforcier]

Probably because of conspiracy theorists such as yourself. ;)

Re:Which one is better?

[omicronish]

I spent 2 years of my life as a UI guy and I have nothing but the utmost respect for "good" UI developers and designers. The parents comments about an IDE appear to come from someone who is a UI guy. To use an analogy though; it is kinda like a mechanic saying that they don't like a wrench because it looks ugly.

Oh my mistake if it sounded like I hated JBuilder because it looked ugly. What really made it terrible was its UI behavior. It absolutely sucks when every Windows program with multiple child documents uses Ctrl+Tab to cycle through them, and JBuilder uses God knows what key combo. It's also just as bad when Alt+Tab produces strange behavior in direct contrast to every other program I've ever used.

Good points on cross-platform compatibility. The way I see it, I can develop on one platform and debug on others as needed, so I don't need a full blown IDE on other platforms, just decent debuggers. Plus the reality is that projects such as Mono are behind Microsoft's .NET implementation, so there are bigger issues to worry about with cross-platform .NET.

And on UI loading times, I close and open IDEs more often, plus my laptop only has 512 MB of RAM so memory usage matters to me. Outlook currently only uses 10 MB of memory on my machine. *shrugs* There are always conflicting opinions in this area, so there's no real point in debating it.

Re:Which one is better?

[Compay]

I've used both quite a bit for J2EE development in the last 2-3 years. My J2EE development with Eclipse has been done using the JBoss-IDE plugins, and my JBuilder work was done using JBuilder 9 - 2005 on OS X.

JBuilder provides a reasonably decent GUI-driven interface for creating entity beans directly from a database schema, which for me was very convenient. It also has GUI-based deployment descriptor editors. The UI is all Swing based, and is a little bit clunky on OS X, but still a big timesaver compared to doing things manually. The learning curve was very easy to get over, and this helped me get my foot in the door with J2EE when I was starting out with it.

Eclipse/JBoss-IDE uses XDoclet tags to generate your EJB code, which is harder to learn if you're a newbie with J2EE. I've been mucking around with the stuff for around 2 years, so I've pretty much stuck with Eclipse since the XDoclet-based setup, while more work to develop with up front, is ultimately more powerful. IMHO, at least.

With Eclipse, running JBoss inside the IDE to do hot code swapping (change one or two lines of EJB code and you don't need to redeploy the whole app to make live) and debugging works very well. I have not attempted this with JBuilder lately, but as of a few versions back it made the whole thing run as slow as molasses in January.

The main benefit to Eclipse, for me, though, was the fact that it's free, compared to $5000+ for JBuilder. Gee, and you wonder why their revenue was dropping.

Hopefully Borland will continue to make some positive impact in the IDE world; I liked their software before but just could not afford to use it. Being able to have the best of JBuilder and Eclipse as one program will be of great benefit to a lot of people, if it ever happens.

Re:Which one is better?

[neurojab]

JBuilder is terrible because you didn't like the UI? I can understand if you didn't "like" it because of the UI, or in your case a few specific things in the UI, but to rate it as terrible is an overstatement.

All an IDE is, effectively, is a UI, so perhaps it is appropriate to say that if the the UI is crap, the IDE is also crap.

Re:Which one is better?

[mrlpz]

"It is good for creating SWING apps and connecting them to Oracle (shocker, considering it is made by Oracle). I did prefer Visual Cafe for SWING, but JDeveloper works fine."

Maybe JDeveloper 10 has made strides...I found JDeveloper 9 very cumbersome for creating UI's. Just the same, my comparison against VS.NET was just that, a comparison. It didn't speak otaku-type favorable of VS.NET, nor was it critical of Eclipse. I couldn't care less about load times myself, personally I care more about how stable it is while it's running. And frankly, Eclipse hasn't blipped for me.

So, enjoy what you use now. Just be glad we're not in the olden days of having to tweak .DLG files and running RC.exe before building your program. I still remember the days even before that ( Yes, I've been working on GUI-enabled OS's that long ).

I don't quite know where you're getting the "mechanic saying that they don't like a wrench because it looks ugly". The analogies don't match.
However, if the analogy had been worded like this "mechanic....because it's hard to hold steady, slips constantly because it doesn't really FIT right, or conversely isn't flexible enough ( in circumstances where it needs to be )", THEN you might've actually understood what I was trying say. So maybe you feel comfortable within what JDeveloper provides, but frankly of the Java IDE's that are out there, Eclipse ( when equipped with either the Visual Editor, Jigloo, or WindowsBuilderPro plugins ) is an absolute joy to work in.

One of the guys from work had to do a UI-based project for one of his grad classes, and the teacher had specified JBuilder to create the project. JBuilder X ( which JDeveloper is based on ). Now this guy was admittedly new to Java, but has worked under .NET for several years, and is "not a newbie". It took me 5 minutes, 5 to get him up and running within Eclipse.....he hasn't looked back since.

If you feel happy with JDeveloper, good for you.
If someone has some non-nonsensical criticism about it, don't whine. I know Eclipse isn't the be-all, end-all, at least not yet. But, it is by far a step in the right direction.

SCM

[jbolden]

Not that Linus would ever agree but they have a pretty good collection of SCM tools including integrating high level requirements, detailed requirements bug tracking and SCM, UML modeling... essentially a rational light that is more flexible.

Making that whole system available would be a really big gift to open source and education. They could do it with something like the old QT license free for non profit and non commercial... They would get a huge following for their toolset overnight.

Visual Studio, fast

[guardia]

Of course, Visual Studio is faster than Eclipse, JBuilder or NetBeans for that matter. It's written in C/C++. "Good" old (at least) code in there. C# is being added gradually, but most of it is still C/C++.

misused

[namekuseijin]

"you can always go completely free (in terms of IDE price) with SharpDevelop or notepad"

Nice subtle reasoning here: SharpDevelop compared to Notepad. Note pad. This is not a tool for software developers, more like people who take notes for a job, like researchers or reporters.

You could at least mention some genuinely power free software, cross-platforms, general-purpose code editors like XEmacs or Scite. Now that is fair to compare with a good IDE like SharpDevelop...

Dunno about JBuilder, but Eclipse is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used plain Eclipse every day for the last 3 years and I have to say, it's the best development environment I've ever used. I admit, I'm biased (I know many of the people who wrote it :) but consider: Eclipse has the best refactoring tools, best debugger and best customizable, plugin-oriented architecture of any IDE out there. It's free and it comes with best-of-breed Java tooling. Of course, the Eclipse developers develop it with Eclipse, and they have a long history of building great IDEs (Visual Age for Java, ENVY Smalltalk, etc), and Eclipse draws on all that past experience.

Re:switch to .NET ppl

[Coral Snake USA]

Python: Even with a Open Source IDE Java is PROPRIETARY and even with Mono .NET is a Micro$oft software patent trap just waiting to snap shut and amputate the penguin's foot. Python is the only general purpose interpreted or "managed" language that is full Open Source. If you want to use something proprietary a shareware language called Euphoria is also a great choice. It comes in 32 bit Winconsole or DOS, Win32 GUI, Linux Console FreeBSD console, GTK and WxWidgets flavors and is a very simple download even on dial up. Further more with Euphoria you can use it as a cross platform "managed" language with your sources open (it is completely free "as in beer" for that purpose) or you can create stand alone closed executables with it through a binding and shrouding process. (The software for binding and shrouding is the shareware you pay for when you register Euphoria.) also the euphoria interpreter is one of the fastest and smallest interpreters in existance.

MM said he didn't know what Borland'Planning

[myisaacxu]

Mike Milinkovich said"I honestly don't know what Borland may or may not be planning. " ,please see http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?threa d_id=33488JBuilder reportedly migrating to Eclipse?

Re:Which one is better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at netbeans, seriously, I moved from JBuilder to netbeans a few months ago, love it - its really good.

Re:Which one is better?

[Algan]

I used to be a JBuilder fan but I've recently switched to Eclipse. Here's my $0.02:

The two IDEs are relatively similar in functionality. Eclipse has a steeper learning curve than JBuilder, but once you get used to its peculiarities, it's a very powerfull tool. Eclipse's GUI designer is still in its infancy, so it sucks compared to JBuilder but the refactoring and code management tools make up for it. Since I do a lot of server side Java, GUIs are not a priority for me - YMMV. Eclipse inherits IBMs on the fly compiling, so you see where you screw up as you type in your code. The code analyzer is one of the biggest things for me, I get on the fly warnings that saved me a lot of headaches so far - enable all the warnings and pay attention to them and you'll cut runtime errors in half. Eclipse is extremely configurable, to the point where you get lost in the maze of options. It has a modular, plugin based architecture - in fact Eclipse shines only after you download some plugins. And finally, the most important aspect: the cost :)

Re:Which one is better?

[stonecypher]

What makes JBuilder so terrible is its non-native GUI. The thing just looks bad with its GUI that's almost Win32, but not quite. Ctrl+Tab doesn't switch between code panes as you would expect in any Windows app; instead it uselessly switches between panes such as Project and Structure.

This is Windows recommended UI behavior for MDI apps. Read the interface standard.

But by far the absolute worse was its ignorance of Windows' ClearType setting for font smoothing.

That's funny: it works here.

Lots of people switch their editor fonts; many people use the font FixedSys, because it has good pixel choices. The reason it has good pixel choices is that it's a bitmap font, and is therefore unhintable in cleartype. This is the basis of most people thinking mIRC has broken cleartype support, too: it ships with FixedSys as the default window font.

Do note that there is no API call in any version of Windows from Win16 on which would not be hinted by ClearType; if Borland broke ClearType, then they remade every single bit of font drawing code from the ground up. The chances they did that are miniscule. Perhaps you just need to spend more time looking for the problem, before announcing to SlashDot how broken something is?

There are other GUI differences but I'm a horribly nit-picky person when it comes to UI

And, unfortunately, your nits picked are in contrast with the Win32 interface standard, as your demands for an MDI app to follow SDI behavior above show.

You need to learn that there's a difference between being a stickler for detail and whining that things don't work the way that you expect for them to. One is born of familiarity with existing standards; the other is clueless self-aggrandizing pablum. It's not Borland's fault that you don't know more than the very basics of Win32 UI behaviors; every single one of their pane and task switching hotkeys, including f10 and f11, are standards that have been with us longer than a default Windows TCP/IP stack. Hell, Win/QVT supported these. Maybe you should watch that movie that comes with a fresh XP install.

But it's not bad if you get used to it, so it's probably just that I'm unfamiliar with Eclipse.

Or Win32 UI standards. Or JBuilder. You actually suggest that Eclipse is more configurable than JBuilder. Have you even looked?

Re:Which one is better?

[stonecypher]

All an IDE is, effectively, is a UI

Wow, you really don't get much out of your IDEs, do you?

HOW THE HELL DID THE PARENT GET MODDED UP? eom

[Anonymous Coward]

His "informative" view doesn't contain any "information" about jack shit, except his whining about swing vs swt.

Re: Mods on crack - again!

[petermgreen]

afaict borland is a shadow of its former self

they make thier money by charging insane prices to those companies who are still locked into thier products

they are here now and they will probablly still be here for many years to come so long as they can keep the books balanced.

but there is so much good free software around now that borlands days as a relavent compiler firm must surely be numbered

Re:Which one is better?

[omicronish]

This is Windows recommended UI behavior for MDI apps. Read the interface standard.

I probably wasn't clear, but JBuilder's Ctrl+Tab did not switch between MDI windows, but instead switched between docked windows. That's the problem, and goes against Windows UI standards.

That's funny: it works here.

Doesn't matter if it works for you, it doesn't work for me, regardless of the font I use. Furthermore I'm using a TT font (OCR A Extended), and it is rendered with ClearType in all apps I use except JBuilder.

You need to learn that there's a difference between being a stickler for detail and whining that things don't work the way that you expect for them to. One is born of familiarity with existing standards; the other is clueless self-aggrandizing pablum. It's not Borland's fault that you don't know more than the very basics of Win32 UI behaviors; every single one of their pane and task switching hotkeys, including f10 and f11, are standards that have been with us longer than a default Windows TCP/IP stack. Hell, Win/QVT supported these. Maybe you should watch that movie that comes with a fresh XP install.

I've used Windows for over a decade now, and believe me, I know Windows UI behavior. Apologies if I rambled too much, but when the basic behavior of Alt+tab, Ctrl+Tab does not match that of all other Windows apps, something's seriously wrong. BTW, this and other comments I'm getting makes me wonder if this has been fixed in a recent version. I believe I'm using JBuilder 2005 Community Edition; I installed it in January. What version are you using?

Or Win32 UI standards. Or JBuilder. You actually suggest that Eclipse is more configurable than JBuilder. Have you even looked?

Yes, I've looked. Just take a look at the Java code formatting options; there are significantly more configuration settings in Eclipse compared to either JBuilder or VS 2003.

Re:Which one is better?

[Anonymous Coward]

troll? C'mon. What is an IDE if not a UI over a compiler, debugger, editor, and source control system?

Re:Which one is better?

[neurojab]

Wow, you really don't get much out of your IDEs, do you?

I'd follow up that question with another one... you haven't ever used vi and gcc to produce a C program either, have you?

An IDE provides a UI over the compiler, debugger, and source control system, and an integrated editor with a few wizards. That's pretty much it. If all that sucks, then the IDE sucks.... how could it not?

Personally I an IDE all the time, and I find it quite useful, but I don't pretend that it's anything more than a nice UI over other components.