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Borland Announces the Return of the Turbo Products, with Video 286

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the save-us-turboman dept.
Leonel writes "Borland Software's Developer Tools Group just announced the return of the Turbo line of products. With free and cheap versions, it's aimed at students, hobbyist developers, occupational developers and individual programming professionals. More information is available at the the Turbo Explorer website, including a video of the Adventures of TurboMan."
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Borland Announces the Return of the Turbo Products, with Video More

Borland Announces the Return of the Turbo Products, with Video

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  • What age group? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by neonprimetime ( 528653 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @03:53PM (#15869054)
    it's aimed at students, hobbyist developers, occupational developers and individual programming professionals. More information is available at the the Turbo Explorer website, including a video of the Adventures of TurboMan.

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

  • Hardware requirements? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rupert_Giles ( 992036 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @03:56PM (#15869079)
    Do these still need two 5.25" floppy drives to run? I'm not sure I remember where mine are.
    • I remember when we got version 3.1 of the Turbo C++ for Windows in (I think that was it). It came on 1 CD, about 10 HD 3.5" floppies, or about 60 standard 5.25 floppies.

      And at the time we made backups of all the disks and worked from those. Ugh.
      • Some of the first code I wrote under DOS used Turbo C 1.0. Still have the manuals around here somewhere...

        I still have a soft spot for the Brief editor (which Borland acquired at some point from UnderWare), too. Some of my most productive coding was done under Brief + dBrief...

        • Brief and Vedit were the 2 popular editors where I worked, back in those days. I'm still using Vedit, though the Windows XP version has a few more features than the CP/M version did :-)

  • That's just wierd (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KingDaveRa ( 620784 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @03:59PM (#15869105) Homepage
    Last night, I was digging around on the Borland site to see if there was such a thing as this, and today they announce it. How's that for a co-incidence!

    I'll certainly be interested to look at these though. Free things are ALWAYS good :)

    • Re:That's just wierd (Score:5, Funny)

      by bwcarty ( 660606 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:10PM (#15869196)
      Free things are ALWAYS good :)

      Did you live in Troy [wikipedia.org] in a previous life?
      • Of course, if the Trojans had actually bothered to open up the horse (or even poke the horse with a few dozen spears or even burn the horse to sacrifice it to the gods), they might have gotten several *fantastic* free gifts including Odysseus and several of Greek's best soldiers.

        That just goes to show that often it's possible to turn a disadvantage into an advantage.

      • Beware of gifts bearing Greeks.

    • Re:That's just wierd (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:17PM (#15869278) Homepage Journal
      Last night, I was digging around on the Borland site to see if there was such a thing as this, and today they announce it. How's that for a co-incidence!
      It's no coincidence. The web guy noticed your digging in the server logs, mumbled in dull surprise at the fact that anyone was still interested, and cut-and-pasted your activities in the logs a few hundred thousand times for a few giggles to break up the monotony.

      This morning happened to be when the bosses glanced at the logs, and once they realized how "popular" this stuff seems to be, they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that it's time for the return of Turbo.

  • Here we go again... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:00PM (#15869113)
    TurboProducts return!

    With 80% more standards non-compliance.

  • TurboC (Score:5, Funny)

    by WPIDalamar ( 122110 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:02PM (#15869133) Homepage
    I learned to program on a dos version of TurboC ... To this day I still prefer the yellow on blue text :)
    • Same here, but what I DON'T prefer is segmented memory and trying to figure out when to use the small library, the medium, or the large (or whatever it was called). Not that it is Borland's fault. DOS programming sucks ass.

      • Re:TurboC (Score:2, Insightful)

        by 91degrees ( 207121 )
        Yes, but didn't it require a 386 or better to run the IDE, or was that a different version? Always struck me as odd that it had a 32 bit processor requirement but no 32 bit compiler.

        It was nice that you could write a simple single file C application, and compile and run it without any concern over projects and solutions or makefiles. Also nice that it gave a lot of screen real estate to the editor.

    • Re:TurboC (Score:2, Insightful)

      by DAharon ( 937864 )
      Me too. It would be really nice if they just ported that to Linux. It was the perfect IDE for me. Easy to use. Small and fast, with a shell to test programs.
    • I still use ctrl-insert and shift-insert for copy and paste. Hard habit to break.

    • Re:TurboC (Score:5, Informative)

      by RuneB ( 170521 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @05:39PM (#15869892)
      You might want to try SETEDIT [sourceforge.net] or RHIDE [rhide.com]. SETEDIT is an editor and RHIDE is an IDE, both written using the Turbo Vision toolkit.

  • Coincidence? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rob86TA ( 955953 ) <Robert.Atkinson@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:02PM (#15869134)
    Interesting that the Borland tools are being released close to the end of the free year of MS's Express line (ending in Nov. I believe). Could Borland be preparing to take on the MS developer tool chain again?

    Considering that Visual Studio is a highly evolved (I know, this is ALWAYS open for debate on /.) tool chain. It'll be fun to see if Borland can bring anything new and unique to compete with the VS Express Editions.

    • Re:Coincidence? (Score:5, Informative)

      by nuzak ( 959558 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:17PM (#15869281) Journal
      > Interesting that the Borland tools are being released close to the end of the free year of MS's Express line (ending in Nov. I believe).

      Microsoft lifted the end date back in April. It's being offered for free forever. Well, as long as forever goes with Microsoft (The VS2003 toolchain didn't take long to disappear).

      • The VS2003 toolchain didn't take long to disappear

        Heck, their network drivers didn't take long to disappear after they quit selling their networking products. I had lost my CD for their wireless card and it's not available. This is a significant departure in comparison with many major brand hardware makers where drivers are kept up seemingly indefinitely. For example, old modem drivers are still available on US Robotic's site (or whoever bought them up). Drivers for my eight year old Compaq workatations
    • close to the end of the free year of MS's Express line (ending in Nov. I believe)

      I know this is offtopic, but what does this mean? I downloaded most of the VS express editions. Will they stop working? or will they just not let anyone download them after november?
      • The original deal was, the license is permanent, but new licenses wouldn't be offered after a certain date. So if you got it before the cutoff, you could use it forever.

        Currently, though, there's no cutoff date listed.
    • Considering that Visual Studio is a highly evolved (I know, this is ALWAYS open for debate on /.) tool chain. It'll be fun to see if Borland can bring anything new and unique to compete with the VS Express Editions.

      I sure hope they can compete with Microsoft. As it stands now, they have (arguably) the most visible OS, developer platform, database, and office tools in the business arena. The way everything stacks up, and the way that businesses like a simple direct solution, Microsoft basically has to c
    • I thought that too, but then I double-checked Microsoft's FAQ [microsoft.com]: Effective April 19th, 2006, all Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions are free permanently. This pricing covers all Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions including Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, Visual J#, and Visual Web Developer as well as all localized versions of Visual Studio Express.

      We'll see if they ever update it, though.

      But yeah, this sounds like Borland is trying to compete with MS tools. Good for them! I'm all for companies giving a hand to folks who want to learn their tools... especially if we get free stuff out of the deal. :)

  • The times they are a changin' (Score:5, Insightful)

    by realnowhereman ( 263389 ) <andyparkins@nOsPam.gmail.com> on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:03PM (#15869142)
    At the time, Borland (or maybe Watcom) had the best C++ compilers. They also had a wonderfully designed library in the form of TurboVision for doing console applications with menus and windows. However, time has passed, GCC is a damned fine compiler and Qt is a superb UI framework (et al). If Borland wanted to join in this game they should have open sourced their compiler a long time ago. Too little, too late I'm afraid.

    It's a shame really, Borland were my favourite company, then Philip Kahn left, they changed their name to Inprise and all their top developers went to Microsoft.
    • At the time, Borland (or maybe Watcom) had the best C++ compilers.

      I'm afraid I have never forgiven Borland for their circa 1992 UI bug (or would that be a deliberate feature in some jokester's eyes?) in which a certain keystroke sequence used to build one's app in the MS IDE caused the Borland IDE to crash without saving the files on which one was working. The deal was that the MS IDE accepted a keystroke sequence of {altdown}{key1}{key2}{altup}, whereas Borland required {altdown}{key1}{altup}{key2}.

  • Turbo C++ (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Almahtar ( 991773 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:06PM (#15869164) Journal
    Could be really nice having another commercial Windows C++ IDE around. At my workplace we really need an alternative to Visual Studio. In a codebase that's nearly 1,000,000 lines intellisense is insanely slow, completely inaccurate, and honestly just plain annoying. Visual studio randomly crashes, etc. We're in the process of switching to CMake so people can use Eclipse or whatever IDE they want, but Eclipse's CDT is still a bit too young for my tastes. Perhaps Borland's IDE will provide a welcome reprieve and nice debugging.

    • Intellisense (Score:2, Informative)

      by gr8dude ( 832945 )
      I used Delphi, Builder, and Visual Studio - and I found Borland's intellisense much less responsive than the one in the Microsoft IDE.

      Although I use it with not-that-complex projects, in my case the difference between speed is evident: it takes forever for the list of relevant options to show up in Borland's IDEs, while in VS the speed at which it shows up and can be used is the same, even after the project grows in complexity.
    • I'm diving straight into technicalities here, but if you're using Visual Studio 2005 and have slowness increasing as code grows in your open documents, you could always try turning off the Navigation Bar (the long horizontal bar just on top of the main code window normally). I never used it anyway, and either something else changed causing it, or I'm seeing quite an increase in basic code navigation speed nowadays. There was a bug related to that one that "should" have been fixed in the betas, but I'm not s
  • And I still avoid microsofts line like the plague. Its good to see the Turbo brand back.

  • Why Switch To Borland's Turbo Line? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:07PM (#15869171)
    I would imagine that Borland hopes to boost sales of its higher end lines by giving away the cheap ones and hooking the developers, but they'd better have some super-sweet bait on the end of the hook. There are tons of powerful IDE's, many free. Unless they bring something to the table that is lacking in other products, I can't see them reaching their business objectives.

    People are beginning to expect the IDE to be free. Oracle knows this, so does Sun.

    Best of luck to Borland. I have fond memories all the way back to Borland C++ 3.x for Windows, and Delphi - ESPECIALLY Delphi.
  • Does the "New Borland" run on Mac OS X? Or do we have to wait for "Borland Classic" to come out?
  • Are these available for download?

    I can't see any working download link on the site.
    Or is it a firewall or browser compatibility problem?

    • Re:download (Score:5, Informative)

      by blirp ( 147278 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:19PM (#15869296)
      Are these available for download?

      Well, there's that
          27 days, 9 hrs, 40 mins, 30 secs
          until the Turbo(s) are here!
      timer there [turboexplorer.com]. Might explain the missing download links. :*)
    • Are these available for download?

      I can't see any working download link on the site.

      Look on the right hand side of the page, near the top. There is a countdown showing that in 27 days, 15 hrs, 41 mins, 45 secs (and counting) these will become available. Your browser could be hiding that part.

      For now, it's a pre-announcement of a product you can't have yet.

      Cheers

  • Sad, these are Borland's last ideas... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bocsika ( 929320 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:13PM (#15869235)
    My enterprise was based on Borland C++ in the last 10 years.

    But this seems to be the last desperate ad before the collapse: the feature list contains no news at all - all of it should have been in Borland IDEs years ago.

    Instead of chewing new buzzwords, the daily used tools should have been cleaned up first: Borland C++ Builder 6 behaves terribly even on medium size projects, (crashes, tons of bugs, etc.)
    If Borland had a yearly update, I would be their greatest fun.
    If Kylix would have been developed further, I would pay for it, because we need cross-platform Linux tools...
    So many dead tools...

    Nothing to see here, man, move away... to Qt, for example.
    It is today's Borland. And shines.

    But because it provides a steady release cycle, people will buy it, even if it is pricey.

  • Great stuff! But... (Score:3, Informative)

    by blirp ( 147278 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:16PM (#15869265)
    This looks great. It brings back memories of when the IDE was so small and started so fast, I used Turbo Pascal as my editor of choice. Yeah, those glory days in the mid-80's....
    These days Borland Developer Studio gives me time to make some coffee.

    BUT .Net 1.1? Seriously? We've been at 2.0 for some time now, right? Did Borland just miss that announcement?

    • Others have pointed out that a big point of this is likely to attract buyers for their IDE group which is up for sale. As I recall, the "released" version of Mono is an open source, cross-platform .NET 1.1 (+some later features) implementation that Novell has invested heavily in; a set of commercial development tools that target .NET 1.1 might be particularly interesting to Novell.

  • This is only to bring up their stock price! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jhfry ( 829244 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:17PM (#15869276)
    FTA:
    "the company's Developer Tools Group, WHICH IS UP FOR SALE, is scheduled to announce single-language versions of the components of Borland Developer Studio..."

    The "up for sale" bit tells me that what they are doing is trying to drive some good press, boost their stock price a bit, and negotiate a higher selling price.

    Like most has-been corporations, they refuse to accept that they are obsolete and out of the running, so they would rather simply inflate their stock prices artifically so they can walk away with a nice chunk of change ans say, "see we didn't fail!" All I can say is, at least they didn't inflate theirs like SCO did!

    • Re:This is only to bring up their stock price! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Here's the deal. Borland dev tool's have been becoming 'has been' for a while, despite generally superior quality, due to years of management fubar's - beginning with Inprise. Borland management's focus is now "ALM" tools, which have been siphoning profits from products like Delphi for at least a couple of years.

      The dev tools division has been up for sale for a while - six months or so. During that time, 'DevCo' has been operating somewhat independently from Borland and has produced a couple of major ser
  • Next : World announces to Borland that nobody cares anymore about what they do.

    The Microsoft People have Visual Studio. The Java people have Eclipse/NetBeans. The OSS people have gcc, perl and whatnot.

    Nobody needs Borland anymore.
    • Your right, there is no room for a company that produces fast, native Windows applications any more. Let's all bloat our apps with .NET/Java/etc. Runtime "engines", "frameworks", "environments" etc. are THE way to go. Sheesh, nobody uses Windows anymore--well, except for 90% of the planet.

  • Yawn... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by frank_adrian314159 ( 469671 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:24PM (#15869337) Homepage
    Tell me when they bring back TurboProlog...

  • What a gigantic fuck-up (Score:5, Insightful)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:28PM (#15869361) Homepage
    Borland was EXTREMELY popular back in the day. They could have OWNED the dev tools space completely. At some point they got too carried away with MBA-related activities, such as branding, enterprise fads du jour, etc and they lost their userbase and fucked up their products. I have used Delphi and C++ Builder extensively. 6-7 years back there was NO decent RAD alternative. The best thing about them was you could drop all the way to the bare metal at any time if you wanted to and you could have RAD capabilities if you needed to deliver stuff quickly.

    I feel for Borland, but at this point I think they should fold up their tent and die. They're beyond any hope of recovery, thanks to retarded management and marketing.
    • Borland is selling their IDE tools. They will be spun out as a separate, standalone company focused entirely on developers, just like "old Borland' was. The Turbo products are an indication of the new focus on Developers in the new company.
    • The think I most fondly remember about Borladn was their no-nonsense user license. Instead of 20 pages of legalspeak, they had two or three paragraphs that said "Don't copy this, don't give it to your friends. you know you want to be nice, but we'd like to stay in business."

      It was very human and gave a good first impression.
    • >>I have used Delphi and C++ Builder extensively. 6-7 years back there was NO decent RAD alternative.

      Well you were lucky, i ad to walk 15 miles to work int snow, then use Turbo Pascal 3, and compile everyting into a 64k COM file, and if it didnt run, my bos used to beat me with a stick.

  • Wow -- such negativity (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NavySpy ( 39494 )
    Wow -- what an impressive display of negativity!
  • I'm sure this product is great, but what is going to attract developers to these IDEs, especially the C# IDE when Microsoft is already giving away Visual Studio Express for free. Although it is lacking some of the features of the full version of Visual Studio for hobbiests and students, the market Borland seems to be trying to attract, these tools are great and free. I think Borland already missed their opportunity here

    • I'm sure this product is great, but what is going to attract developers to these IDEs, especially the C# IDE when Microsoft is already giving away Visual Studio Express for free.

      Well, Borland's giving their own "Explorer" versions for free, too; I suspect some people will experiment with both free IDE's, and, when given a choice, chose to pay for the more advanced version of whichever suits them better.

      There are some interesting features on the feature lists that may be competitive advantages compared t

  • Never mind that shit!! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @04:35PM (#15869424)
    We want Brief (remember UnderWare?) back!
    The best programmers editor evar! Globsub in a column-marked block? No problemo!
    Open source it!
  • Is TurboMan related to Johnny Turbo [team-coti.com], by any chance?
  • Can I produce binaries that I can distribute for free, or are we hamstrung and have to purchase the pro version???
  • ... shame on me. Third time the charm? Not a chance.

    No way I'm going back to Borland for dev tools.
    In the late 80's, Turbo Pascal for the Mac was bug-ridden and behind on Mac system call support. A tech support call revealed they knew about it, and didn't care. The tech said that their sales were roughly half the number of copies in use, and it didn't pay for them to continue developing.

    In the early 90's, after learning Paradox DOS at a customer request, Paradox Windows came out claiming upward compatibi
  • Cool! I've missed that Turbo button.

  • New versus old. I stick with the proven old. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dinther ( 738910 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @05:26PM (#15869780) Homepage
    I don't get it. Why does everyone want new tools all the time. Windows is still windows, A button is still a button and the communication protocols are supported accross the development platforms.

    I have been working with Delphi since version 3 and still tackle new projects today with Delphi 6 (Don't want the newer and slower Visual Studio lookalike IDE).

    Here at work I am cracking up lauging these days. Most of the dev team have moved to gadget-land using Visual Studio and C#. As a result they need to upgrade all the dev machines (Again) and find out that the resources sucked up by the bloatware .net platform leaves them with very little working power. There all stressed and tearing their hair out when a server spits blood because they can't see inside!

    In the mean time our old and trusty properly hand coded applications keep scaling up on ever more powerful hardware showing there is many more years of use in the old and proven.

    I believe I am more productive using Delphi today than a whole line up of fancy Microsoft fanboy developers because I have access to absolutely amazing free library source code build and refined by users over the years. A massive Delphi and Windows API knowledge base indexed by Google newsgroups, a solid grounded knowledge of my tools and libraries and last but not least a very supportive Delphi user base.

    I hope this Turbo initiative will bring more developers to their senses and start coding again instead of playing with shiny black box Microsoft crap.
    • Hear, hear. I just bought Delphi 2006 and within four days I was back to my trusty Delphi 6.

      - Delphi 6 has WAY better help (what in God's name were they thinking when they changed it?)
      - The classic MDI interface is easier to work with
      - Being a native Win32 app, the IDE is way faster

      Delphi 6 came out in 2001, and for Win32 development it's just as useful to me as it was when I first bought it. I seriously don't understand the C# zealotry. Delphi is simply killer.

  • A few kind suggestions: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ancient_Hacker ( 751168 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @05:30PM (#15869815)
    Borland: I've been using your products on and off since Turbo Pascal 1.0. You've had some real winners in there, and a few dogs. For the last decade or so, more woofers than winners. Please take these suggestions in the spirit that they're given:
    • I've seen hundreds of web sites, and yours is way down there around the bottom in terms of usability. I don't think it's changed much in the last ten years. Lots of fancy menus that reflect your corporate structure, not what we're interested in. Your download pages have been mostly unintelligible for almost a decade. Youre delphi download page is complete chaos. To download a trial copy you have to jump thru several hoops, fill out some useless marketing info forms, then separately login to get a key e-mailed to you. It's all too easy to get stuck going around in loops, again and again. Nothing seems to make sense or is integrated with anything else.
    • Your pzatch methodology is the worst I've ever seen, and I've seen Sun's. Patches are supplied in some strange file format, not clearly labeled as being a patch to fix what in what. I've tried several times to patch Delphi 6 and finally gave up, it's just too difficult, somewhat harder than cross-compiling gcc for RISC on a Palm Pilot.
    • Announcing you're "just about sold" is really unprofessional. It might make you feel a little better, but it doesnt reassure the customers. Half the time a company is sold is not for its products, but for its customers. There's a 50% chance we're not going to see great new Borland products, but instead coerced to be herded over to some other more-horrible toolset, like the resurrection of Symantec C.
    • We had some really great times together, but yuou've had a far-away look in your eye for ove a decade now. How about we just call it quits?
  • This is a good thing. The 'turbos' were a great learning tool back then, and rather useful too. Now that they are being brought back and updated to more modern systems, all i can say its its nothing but good..

    Many of us first learned 'modern' languages with those products..

  • My rant... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Yuioup ( 452151 )
    I started using Delphi a bit late in the game. A few years ago I chose Delphi 6 because it looked pretty decent and I liked the way it simplified the Win32 API in such a way that we could get to developing software without too much hassle. Delphi 7 came along which I passed over because I wanted to wait for Delphi 8 and jump on the .NET bandwagon. When Delphi 8 came out I bought it...

    ... which was the biggest mistake I ever made. Delphi 8 was a such a POS I was shocked that people actually released software

  • Turbo Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @06:04PM (#15870069) Homepage Journal

    No, they're not bringing back Turbo Pascal. They're just rebranding Delphi and Delphi-based products as "Turbo".

    Hearken, ye, to a Borland survior. (I wrote a good chunk of the API documentation in Delphi, C++Builder, and Kylix.) Borland somehow has always been run by people who know jack about managing other people. They can't implement the most basic corporate policies, like making people work on the stuff they were actually assigned to work on. So they fall back on Stupid Executive Tricks that they picked up at some seminar somewhere. When I was there, management was in love with "lifecycle management" tools, and actually acquired two vendors of them, neither of which actually had a usable product. But most often, the SET consists of simple-minded rebranding. Usually, it's just pointless, like bringing back "Turbo". But sometimes, they really screw up, like when they renamed the company "Inprise".

    Hate to say it, but Borland's pretty much irrelevent. Their last serious achievement was Kylix, which took too long to get out the door, and which targeted a market (Linux desktop developers) that turned out to be nonexistant. And that was 5 years ago! Since then, most of their key people have moved on, and their tools group has stagnated. The fact that management thinks they can sell it just shows how clueless they are.

    Delphi is still my favorite development environment. Or rather it would be, if I could bear to use it. Which I can't — it's just too depressing.

  • Fantastic bit of kit, I wish I still had a similar environment. i've looked for years but nothing's quite the same, including the clones. Man I could develop quickly with that stuff. Look, no mouse! Mmmm TurboRuby...

     

  • Compete with M$ (Score:3, Informative)

    by Edward Teach ( 11577 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @06:35PM (#15870265)
    I'm not sure how Borland will compete with Micro$oft for the student market. Students whose departments participate in the Microsoft Distribution Network Academic Alliance, get free versions of Visual Studio 2005 Professional, along with loads of other M$ software. Granted, it is for non-commercial use but they are full, un-crippled versions. I know, some would say that all M$ software is crippled, but you know what I mean.

    My students are instructed to bring CD-R's the first week of class so they can get their free VS 2005 Pro. I used to use Borland's Turbo products, many years ago when I was first starting out in college. I don't remember how much I payed for them but I do remember them being student friendly.

    How is Borland going to compete when college departments can pay $799 for the first year and $399 for each additional year of the MSDNAA and be able to give their students thousands of dollars worth of free software as well as install that software for free in their labs?

  • Borland's antique software available (Score:3, Interesting)

    by whitefox ( 16740 ) on Tuesday August 08, 2006 @06:47PM (#15870351)
    For those nostalgic types, Borland released "antique" versions of their software years ago: http://bdn.borland.com/museum/antiquesoftware/ [borland.com]. The list includes
    • Turbo Pascal v1.0
    • Turbo Pascal v3.02
    • Turbo Pascal v5.5
    • Turbo C version 2.01
    • Turbo C++ version 1.01

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

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

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

  • Borland is confused! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ikhalil ( 738889 )
    Apparently Borland is a company that doesn't really know what they want and are with a blurred strategy! At some point in time they decide to wash away the name they built and their long lasting achievements. And a couple of years later they are longing to the return of the very old days! They are in the business of building excellent (really excellent) development environments and gaining enormous acceptance and market share and then abandoning their products/names as if it has never bee theirs!!!
  • At this point, I'd be ready for just about anything that let me get away from Visual Studio. I've used it since it was 16-bit, and I've even tolerated all the weird interface changes they've made to the IDE over the years. Through version 7.0, it was pretty much just a matter of re-learning where the things I needed were, which sucks, but whatever. It wasn't a big enough productivity sink to justify switching to something else. But with version 8.0 (a.k.a. Visual Studio 2005), Microsoft has officially l

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