New Borland Development Studio

mesozoic writes "News.com is running a scoop on Borland's up-and-coming development suite, code-named 'Galileo'. It'll be compatible with both .NET and Java, and is aimed at developers who don't want to be cornered into using Microsoft's entire suite of programs. I personally am very nostalgic for Borland's old DOS-based IDE, and I'll be watching for this in the future."

C++ ABI Compatibility w/Visual Studio.NET?

[lprimak]

Does anybody know whether Borland tools (new or old) are ABI compaible with MS' tools, especially for C++ (unmanaged)
i.e. do C++ libs compiled with VS.Net work with Borland's tools/applications?

No and Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Current Borland tools are not ABI compatible with MS tools. Rumor has it that they plan to fix this in Galileo.

Re:C++ ABI Compatibility w/Visual Studio.NET?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You can use the IDE with the MSVC as the code generator, though, as well as other languages.

Am I missing something?

[one9nine]

"Borland is hoping to position itself as an alternative for developers who want to target .Net, but who do not want to be locked into Microsoft's programming tools and technologies. "

If you don't want to be locked into using M$'s programming tools and technologies, don't use .Net. And if you do want to use .Net (gasp), wouldn't you want to use M$'s programming tools and techonologies which will most likey integrate better and will probably be more productive than non-M$ products?

When I used to be a Microsoft guy, I really liked the way Visual Source Safe, Visual Studio and Visual Basic and SQL Server integrated. I had to admit, it was very slick. Buggy as hell, but very nice to work with. Sounds like Borland is streaching itself too thin with trying to be "an IDE for all seasons".

"Are you saying boo or boo-urns?" Booooooooo!

Re:Am I missing something?

[Raskolnk]

Buggy as hell, but very nice to work with.

He he... That's a good one.

Re:Am I missing something?

[RevAaron]

Well, he had to say something negative about the MS product, or he would've been mocked, ignored, and/or modded down on basis of finding out about a MS product that may actually work. :)

Re:Am I missing something?

[f00zbll]

what does "buggy as hell" refer to? I've used interdev and source safe and hated it. Especially the way the old version of source safe didn't really lock files when you locked it. That was always a nice surprise when some one else goes to do a check in on a file you had explicitly locked. How some one can edit and check-in a file locked by someone else is beyond me.

Re:Am I missing something?

[Sivar]

I used SourceSafe and hated it for exactly the opposite reason--Occasionally developers forgot to un-checkout files and SourceSafe wasn't smart enough to realize that if their computer has been off for 8 hours, they may not be working on that file anymore. There didn't seem to be a way to unlock it even with admin rights.

Re:Am I missing something?

[NDSalerno]

"...wouldn't you want to use M$'s programming tools and techonologies which will most likey integrate better and will probably be more productive than non-M$ products?"

Not true. As an example, one would logically think that because Microsoft develops MS Windows then Microsoft's Visual Studio is the best tool for making GUI apps, COM objects, ActiveX, NT services, etc... Heh, not so. Well, ok, Visual Basic is pretty slick with COM/ActiveX, but it's crap for anything else. Likewise, Visual C++ just plain sucks (and I will spare the WHOLE story why I think it sucks). Surpisingly, Delphi makes writing GUI apps, COM/ActiveX, NT services, etc., very easy. But wait! Borland doesn't develop MS Windows, how could this be so?

Still don't believe. Try this out. COM development in Visual C++ wasn't pretty, in fact you had to know two languages: C/C++ and IDL (which is not the case with Delphi, no IDL programming required). Then Microsoft came out with COM+, which was COM with some niceties for development, like automatic reference counting for example. Now did Borland update Delphi to support COM+. Guess what? They didn't really need to. They already had it before COM+ was invented! What? That doesn't make sense. Well check this out. When Borland made support for COM, their IUnknown interface, and sub-interfaces, were designed with some of COM+'s features in mind, for example the reference counting. So while Visual C++ programmers were having fun with COM in the sadistic sense, COM+ finally came out and the Delphi developers said "heh, we already were doing that, COM+ doesn't really apply to us".

So much for the MS tools must integrate with MS technologies better than anyone else. As for .NET you have to keep in mind that part of what makes up .NET are the standard protocols. Speak those protocols and you are in the game (especially with repsect to web service development). Now it may be nice to also have the ability to use .NET classes (the assemblies), but it is not a requirement. Either way, Borland has yet another chance to show that they can make very quality .NET compatible development tools while not being Microsoft, despite Microsoft developing .NET.

As a side note, Microsoft hired some of Borland's top talent away from them. Some of them help develop .NET. The core architect of the original Delphi, Anders Hejlsberg, co-authored the C# language!! So in a way you can say that Microsoft developed .NET but Borland indirectly developed .NET. As a final note, Borland sued Microsoft for such low-ball tactics. So much for fair competition.

Your best argument

[oliverthered]

If words don't seem to convince them download or order a trail version of CBuilder / Delphi from borlands site and show them that VC6 sucks.

It'll only take about 10mins to convince them!

Microsoftized

[Latent Heat]

I was kind of expecting that Visual Studio .NET would be a lot like Delphi but it is more like a Microsoftized version of Delphi where they made the simple complicated.

For stuff like developing custom controls along with custom property editing, you can do pretty much anything in Delphi by overriding the correct object method. Finding what object method to override can require some searching, but once you figure it out it is clean and simple. Oh, and you look at the class framework source code if you are really stumped.

Once you get past the simple-minded Visual Basic style of programming and get into customizing the design-time behavior of controls for Visual Studio, the thing is a mess of attributes (runtime type info (RTTI) that are themselves objects) and classes you need to extend and plug into those attributes along with service providers, extender providers and gosh who knows what else. Who designed this thing? Did they put implants into Anders' brain?

I wonder how Borland is going to make some sense of this mess.

Re:Am I missing something?

[jmccay]

You forgot to mention Microsoft settled that lawsuit by paying Borland a huge amount of money and licensing Borlands technology. Before there was .NET, there was Delphi and C++ Builder. Both of these compile down to one common language before compiling to object code and eventually to executable or dll. Does this sound like something else? It should. It's what .NET does. Borland was doing that part of .NET before Microsoft. Microsoft doesn't really inovate very well. They assimilate technology from many sources into one product. That's it.

Re:Am I missing something?

[uradu]

> I liked how [...] Visual Studio and Visual Basic and SQL Server integrated

How so? How exactly do Visual Studio (which is really a non-product, I assume you mean VC++) and Visual Basic integrate? They have nothing to do with each other. Oh, they both can integrate VSS support into their menus, but then again, so can many other IDEs. The Delphi IDE has source control hooks that allow you to integrate third party products quite seamlessly.

Re:Am I missing something?

[one9nine]

How so? How exactly do Visual Studio (which is really a non-product, I assume you mean VC++) and Visual Basic integrate?

Sorry, I meant InterDev. And yes, Visual Studio is a product [microsoft.com]. InterDev integrated with SQL Server as a GUI where I was able to view and edit tables as well as write stored procedures and queries. I didn't need a separate GUI. You could also, (although I rarely used it) debug/step-through ASP pages and COM componets on a remote server.

Oh, they both can integrate VSS support into their menus, but then again, so can many other IDEs

Nowadays, yes. But back when I was using M$ for web development, that wasn't the case.

Re:Am I missing something?

[uradu]

> And yes, Visual Studio is a product [microsoft.com].

VS is Microsoft's collective moniker for several different languages and IDEs (VC, VB and possibly InterDev). You cannot load a Visual Studio IDE per se, because there isn't such a thing. Ok, under VS.NET there is one consolidated IDE, but prior to that there wasn't.

> But back when I was using M$ for web development, that wasn't the case.

The Delphi IDE has had source control hooks since before InterDev.

Borland DOS-IDE Nostalgia

[displague]

Check out http://www.rhide.com/

When I first started playing with Linux I thought this was awesome. It let me develop in the old familiar Turbo Pascal 6/7 environment (which Borland also used for their Turbo C)...

I believe it even has it's own debugger (or runs gdb in a subwindow)... All the functions keys are the same too...

If you like those old IDEs, try this, you will never notice a difference.

Re:Borland DOS-IDE Nostalgia

[rif42]

> If you like those old IDEs, try this, you will
> never notice a difference.

Try Free Pascal to get a 32 bit look alike of BP7. The IDE is complete recreation of BP7 IDE.

http://www.freepascal.org/