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Borland Divests IDEs to Focus on ALM
ShinyBrowncoat writes "Borland recently announced they are putting their IDE business up for sale (JBuilder, Delphi, etc.)." This move comes at the same time Borland announced they would be aggressively pushing forward with their Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) business by purchasing Segue Software Inc.
Let me go ahead and plug a couple projects for the disillusioned masses reading this:
Free Delphi Alternative:
Lazarus
Free C++ IDEs:
Anjuta, Code::Blocks, KDevelop (works with other langs too I believe)
Free Python IDE:
Stani's Python Editor
Free Visual Basic Alternative:
Gambas
Free Java (and others) IDE:
Eclipse
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
There's a bunch of free languages and IDEs indeed. Even microsoft has a bunch of totally free "express edition" offerings which are surprisingly good (you can compile using the SDK too - don't need an IDE for that).
Metrowerks sold their x86 compiler technology (to Nokia) about 6 months before Apple announced the switch.
Metrowerks is also owned by Freescale (Motorola), the makers of PowerPC chips.
Codewarrior was competing against a free development environment (XCode) in their primary market.
It's no wonder they stopped making it for Macs.
"I'm a Genius!"*
*Not an actual Genius
None of those come close to replacing C++ Builder, which is the easiet IDE I've found yet to quickly generate useable applications. It's basically like Visual BASIC but with C++ instead of BASIC for the backend code. The GUI can be draw and you can then directly assign code/actions as the results of various widget activities.
Now granted, I've used other environments. I've cranked out a few applications (both Windows and Linux) using Glade and gcc/g++. It works, and when I do Unix development it's a God-send, but it just can't touch C++ Builder.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I think you are missing the point here totally. Borland is /selling/ Delphi and the rest of the tools, to a new company, preferably a company for whom these products would be /the/ focus. Presumably as well, this means that you'll stop seeing the DoubleSpeak that you get from Borland.
/good/ news for people that want the "Old" Borland back.
This is
ALM means an automated windows testing tool, in this case, Silk Test. (Think spy+ plus a recorder and scripting language) It's competitors are Mercury Interactive (Winrunner, Loadrunner, Quick Test Pro) and IBM (Rational Robot.) There are various other tools that are often bundled with this (bundled meaning sold together) that are basically bad bug tracking tools, worse build tools, version control, and some programs that allow you to write requirements and tests in outlines or spreadsheets using really cool widgets, posting with ActiveX COM objects instead of regular HTTP. (Test Director, Clearcase, ClearQuest, etc.) Combine these with UML tools (Rational Rose or TogetherJ - another recent Borland acquisition) and &in theory* your "lifecycle" from design to code to test is managed. In reality these products mostly suck but a few of them have uses and a few of them just don't have good competitors. UML design tools and Automation recorders are just starting to take off in open source (ArgoUML and SAMIE/PAMIE/Watir), Load testing tools can't compete with simple scripts, requirements and test documentation are best done using word processors and spreadsheets, and bug tracking tools are a dime a dozen (Bugzilla, Scarab, Mantis,...). Version control can be done open source or proprietary (CVS/Subversion/Arch vs. Perforce, VSS (ich)) and builds can use ant, make, cruise control, junit, etc. The real trick is integrating this stuff so your developers, testers, deployers, analysts, and especially managers (we love pretty graphs!) can all work together without communicating. It's a laudable goal, but its performed really poorly, with tools that are as a rule a hodgepodge of acquisions and and one-offs. Webify and glum together in a propietary format and voila! the infamous step 3. I know I'm getting into the market.
http://groups.google.com/group/borland.public.delp hi.non-tec% 3Aborland.e n&
hnical/browse_frm/thread/9781ff657b80368a?q=group
public.delphi.*+author%3Adavidi%40borland.com&hl=
or
http://tinyurl.com/8hcek
Scroll down to post 4, it should have been the first but something happened with google's cache.
Summary:
They're looking to refocus the IDE tools group into a company that can focus on the tools and the developers. Also they're still working on the tools, same people nothing has changed, and it'll be sold to a company that shares their vision of moving forward with IDE development.
I worked at Borland during the time in question, and what you describe is not what I saw first hand. But maybe you know Anders personally, and have better info. It just clashes with what I saw.
For example, Anders did not quit and call Microsoft. Microsoft recruited him while he was still employed at Borland. In fact, they sent a limo to pick him up right at the Borland entrance. And how badly did he want to leave Borland? So not badly that when Microsoft offered him a cool million, he asked Borland to match (not beat) the offer, so he could stay.
It was only when Borland execs rejected the idea of any developer being worth a million that he bailed.
Also, while I can't say what Anders thought of Delphi, I can say that the "Delphi for Java" text you put in quotes sounds an awful lot like how he described what he was going to do at his new job, not what he asked of Borland.
As an aside, one bit of data that was clear almost immediately was that everyone -- except for 2 or 3 execs -- thought that losing Anders was awful. It wasn't one of those decisions where, looking back months or years later, you realized it was wrong. It was instantaneous. The decision was made, and every VP and Director I knew said, "Terrible move! Over a lousy million!"
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Also free VB.NET and C# compilers by downloading the Microsoft .NET Runtime SDK. (Only Visual Studio IDE costs $)
Combine Microsoft's free C# compiler and tools with the Open Source Sharp Develop IDE and you have a free C# development environment. Nice.