A few points in Borland's defense. I have used their products for a decade now, and am one of the few to migrate from their Pascal products and Delphi over to their C++ line. Most migration goes the other way! I have had little trouble with version incompatibilities, and used BCB since the first version. True, no upgrade has been 100% completely hassle free, but I don't expect this when upgrading a compiler. Maybe my expectations are too low. Given that each successive version is closer to the ANSI C++ standard though, I expect to have to correct errors in my code that previously passed. Otherwise, I would be using the MS product under Windows. The idea that Delphi devlopers wanting to migrate to Linux will learn C++ is to vastly underestimate the zeal of this community. C++ as a language is public enemy number one, as it is seen as the main competitor for their tool under Windows and the chief reason it never reached the market dominance it deserved. Likewise, the C++ community often sneer at Delphi seeing it as little more that a VB-clone in pascal. This completely underestimates a powerful OO language that has been more mature than C++ until the standard was finally ratified a couple of years back. Even now standard compliance is not perfect. This down-looking attitude really aggravates the community, C++ is about as far from their shopping list as you can be, despite the languages being superficially very similar. Finally, the VCL may not be Open Source, as it is 100% owned and maintained by Borland, but it is hardly closed source either. Ever since version 1 the source code has been available for a registration fee, and shipped as standard with the 'Professional' and 'Enterprise' versions. Most Delphi libraries ship as source code, as the intermediate.DCU file is never binary compatible between product versions, something that is a goal for C++ and the.O/.OBJ files.
I think you miss the worst potential though. I am a borland fan, and desperately hope Kylix is well recieved, which is why I fear scenario B.
Kylix initial market will be existing Delphi developers, trying to leverage their skills onto Linux. This may indeed produce a flurry of new GUI desktop software. The danger is that it all looks like Windows software, as that is what most Kylix early adopters are used to producing. What is the point of writing Linux sofware if it faithfully reproduces all the behaviours of an existing Windows product? Little, beyond agravating the Linux community and putting an extra check-mark on the advertising.
I hope this is not the case, but that's my doomsday scenario. Please don't let this happen...
Slashdot Mirror
A few points in Borland's defense. I have used their products for a decade now, and am one of the few to migrate from their Pascal products and Delphi over to their C++ line. Most migration goes the other way! I have had little trouble with version incompatibilities, and used BCB since the first version. True, no upgrade has been 100% completely hassle free, but I don't expect this when upgrading a compiler. Maybe my expectations are too low. Given that each successive version is closer to the ANSI C++ standard though, I expect to have to correct errors in my code that previously passed. Otherwise, I would be using the MS product under Windows. The idea that Delphi devlopers wanting to migrate to Linux will learn C++ is to vastly underestimate the zeal of this community. C++ as a language is public enemy number one, as it is seen as the main competitor for their tool under Windows and the chief reason it never reached the market dominance it deserved. Likewise, the C++ community often sneer at Delphi seeing it as little more that a VB-clone in pascal. This completely underestimates a powerful OO language that has been more mature than C++ until the standard was finally ratified a couple of years back. Even now standard compliance is not perfect. This down-looking attitude really aggravates the community, C++ is about as far from their shopping list as you can be, despite the languages being superficially very similar. Finally, the VCL may not be Open Source, as it is 100% owned and maintained by Borland, but it is hardly closed source either. Ever since version 1 the source code has been available for a registration fee, and shipped as standard with the 'Professional' and 'Enterprise' versions. Most Delphi libraries ship as source code, as the intermediate .DCU file is never binary compatible between product versions, something that is a goal for C++ and the .O/.OBJ files.
I think you miss the worst potential though. I am a borland fan, and desperately hope Kylix is well recieved, which is why I fear scenario B.
Kylix initial market will be existing Delphi developers, trying to leverage their skills onto Linux. This may indeed produce a flurry of new GUI desktop software. The danger is that it all looks like Windows software, as that is what most Kylix early adopters are used to producing. What is the point of writing Linux sofware if it faithfully reproduces all the behaviours of an existing Windows product? Little, beyond agravating the Linux community and putting an extra check-mark on the advertising.
I hope this is not the case, but that's my doomsday scenario. Please don't let this happen...