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Borland Releases New C++ Toolkit 294

Posted by simoniker from the c++-is-the-new-black dept.
shelleymonster writes "Infoworld points out that, after two years of coding, Borland has released its latest C++ development toolkit. Borland C++BuilderX is a multiplatform IDE for Windows, Linux, and Solaris that provides a brand-new visual development environment. Press release here." According to the Infoworld piece, "While newer languages, such as Java and Microsoft's C#, garner more attention than C++, research firm IDC projected that C and C++ professionals will remain the largest group of developers through 2005."
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Borland Releases New C++ Toolkit More

Borland Releases New C++ Toolkit

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  • About Damn Time. (Score:5, Funny)

    by PakProtector ( 115173 ) <cevkiv@@@gmail...com> on Monday September 15, 2003 @02:53PM (#6967059) Journal
    I've been waiting for this for a long time. I'm still using Borland C++ Builder 5.0. I think. Whatever the latest patch was.

    I think it's time to break out the champange and do a happy-naked-pagan-dance 'round the stonehenge of mainframes in the back yard.
    • I think it's time to break out the champange and do a happy-naked-pagan-dance 'round the stonehenge of mainframes in the back yard.

      Holy Cow!

      Did you see this in the article?!
      "Enterprise Studio for Mobile integrates all Symbian Software Development Kits (SDKs)"

      I don't think you'll be doing much naked dancing with a Sybian SDK!

    • Bah, when I was a kid, we had to use Borland C++ 3.0. And we liked it.

      And when I was an embryo we had to use punch cards, and we liked it!

      You young'ins ain't got it tough, you and your new fangled gui's and champange and happy-naked-pagan-dances...
      • Bah. When I was a kid all I had was Turbo Pascal Version 2, and I liked it. Complete with the "press 1 to compile, 2 to edit" classic menu interface :-)
        • You was lucky! We used to dream of using Turbo Pascal Version 2. When I was a kid we didn't get our supper until we had bootstrapped Wirth's original compiler with a Tiny Pascal interpreter we had from an old Byte magazine.

  • No Screenshots? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @02:54PM (#6967073) Homepage Journal
    New IDE but no screenshots? :-(

    Nice thing is, Borland tends to release 'personal' editions for at-home use that require no money (though the features are slimmed down).

    Being a big fan of the JBuilder series, I'll be sure to d/l the personal edition for C++ (in a day or two when the servers aren't so clogged).

  • Borland? (Score:2, Funny)

    by wmaker ( 701707 )
    What the hell is borland... i thought microsoft was the only c programming language developer.

    j/k of course

  • largest group (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15, 2003 @02:56PM (#6967091)
    "Research firm IDC projected that C and C++ professionals will remain the largest group of developers through 2005."

    That's highly subjective. What is a developer? Do you count sysadmins write shells scripts? (If so, they severely outnumber all other forms of development) Can you really lump in all C and C++ developers together (is someone using Visual C++.NET (i.e. using all the .NET libraries and pretty much ignoring the "standard" C++ libraries) the same as someone using gnu C++ on Solaris? What do you guys think?

    • Re:largest group (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ikewillis ( 586793 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:04PM (#6967192) Homepage
      "That's highly subjective. What is a developer?"

      Someone who is paid for the purposes of developing an application.

      "Do you count sysadmins write shells scripts?"

      No, they are paid to maintain systems, not develop applications. Very little of what they write will ever see the light of day.

      "Can you really lump in all C and C++ developers together (is someone using Visual C++.NET (i.e. using all the .NET libraries and pretty much ignoring the "standard" C++ libraries) the same as someone using gnu C++ on Solaris?"

      I don't think the number of people using C++ with managed extensions is statistically significant.

      What they're trying to say is that the number of developers producing native code applications using C and C++ outnumbers those using some sort of runtime environment in conjunction with a language like C# or Java...

      • "That's highly subjective. What is a developer?"
        Someone who is paid for the purposes of developing an application.

        Are unpaid opensource volunteers not developers? :o

        • Re:largest group (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Sometimes a thank you is payment.

          Open source developers wouldn't do it if they didn't get anything from it.
    • We have "standard" C++ libraries now??? Just kidding. I'd say yeah, C and C++ being the basis of the languages would mean they're the same. If we're going to isolate .NET libraries then we may as well say people using RogueWave are using another language too.
    • "While newer languages, such as Java and Microsoft's C#, garner more attention than C++, research firm IDC projected that C and C++ professionals will remain the largest group of developers through 2005."

      Try 2105. While ton's of Perl, PHP and the rest are out there, the core stuff is going to be C and C++ for the rest of our carears.

      I doubt the C++.Net and shell scripting are even a few percent on the usage scale.

      While I agree there are a lot of varieties the VAST majority would still be C and C++. Lo
      • I'm sure they said that about Cobol back in the day. Who knows? There might just be a revolution in the future. I sure won't rule it out, in any case.

  • IDE? (Score:2, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 )

    .. a multiplatform IDE ..

    Is that like a multiplatform SCSI or multiplatform Fiberchannel?

  • wrong it says (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "According to analyst research firm IDC, C and C++ professionals will remain the largest class of developers through 20051. "

    year 20051?! HOLY SHIT MAN! OWNAGE!

  • But I thought... (Score:3, Funny)

    by BitwizeGHC ( 145393 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @02:58PM (#6967113) Homepage
    Visual Basic professionals were the largest group of developers?

  • Ironic... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15, 2003 @02:58PM (#6967116)
    a C++ IDE written in Java. The scrollbars are the giveaway.
    • Makes sense, if you want to run the IDE on different Operating Systems.

    • Re:Ironic... (Score:4, Informative)

      by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:50PM (#6967661) Homepage Journal
      Yup, looks like they simply used the same framework/engine/kernel from JBuilder. The one thing that won't give away that it is java is the fast loadup, and speed of the entire application.

    • Re:Ironic... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Bunji X ( 444592 )
      Yeah, they should have used
      UIManager.setLookAndFeel("com.sun.java.swing.plaf. windows.WindowsLookAndFeel")
      ;)

    • Re:Ironic... (Score:3, Informative)

      by edwdig ( 47888 )
      The C++ Builder 6.0 IDE was written in C++ Builder. After you installed C++ Builder on Windows 2000, you'd have to run it once as Administrator to get all the registry settings correct. If you tried to run it first as a normal user, you'd get all sorts of errors about C++ Builder runtime files not being registered, and large portions of the UI wouldn't work. But from the filenames you'd get errors about, it was very clear that the IDE was written in C++ Builder.

  • ha ha ha (Score:5, Funny)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday September 15, 2003 @02:59PM (#6967126) Homepage Journal

    research firm IDC projected that C and C++ professionals will remain the largest group of developers through 2005

    C vs. C++ is like vi vs. emacs. Saying that C and C++ professionals are one group is like suggesting a fusion between Megadeth and N'Sync.

    • Re:ha ha ha (Score:3, Funny)

      by RevMike ( 632002 )
      C vs. C++ is like vi vs. emacs. Saying that C and C++ professionals are one group is like suggesting a fusion between Megadeth and N'Sync.

      Kernighan = Lemmy, Straustoupe (sp?) = Timberlake

      • Re:ha ha ha (Score:2, Informative)

        by gantzm ( 212617 )
        Lemmy was in Motorhead.

      • Kernighan = Lemmy, Straustoupe (sp?) = Timberlake

        Um, actually, it's more like:

        Kernighan = Dave Mustaine, Straustroupe = David Ellefson (The idea being that Dave Mustaine was formerly a member of Metallica, and that while working for Metallica they created something comparable to C, and then Dave Mustaine teamed up with David Ellefson to create something bigger, better, and more easily portable, and of course, faster)

        It's a good thing I'm sick right now, otherwise you might think I don't have a life. n

    • Re:ha ha ha (Score:4, Funny)

      by dustmote ( 572761 ) <fleck55&hotmail,com> on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:27PM (#6967419) Homepage Journal
      Megasync? Or N'Death? I'm trying to visualize the videos for bands with these names, and I'm not sure I like what I see. :)

      • Megasync? Or N'Death? I'm trying to visualize the videos for bands with these names, and I'm not sure I like what I see. :)

        There would only be one. It would start with Dave Mustaine whining that his amp isn't the loudest and end with Megadeth gang banging all of the 'N Sync guys and then impaling them on their guitars and stuff.

  • C++ Future Development??? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:00PM (#6967137)
    "...IDC projected that C and C++ professionals will remain the largest group of developers through 2005."


    Then why have I been out of work for over 2 years?

  • So how is Borland play on Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tjstork ( 137384 ) <todd.bandrowskyNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:00PM (#6967145) Homepage Journal

    I'm wondering if I could use Borland stuff to make services that run on both Linux and Windows. I don't expect or want O/S compatability layer. I'm a big boy and I understand how to use #ifdef. What I do want is to be able have my project on an EXT2 partition, do a Linux build, test, then, boot into Windows, do a build, test, etc...

    Thoughts?
    • I haven't used Kylix (the Linux part of Borland C++) much, but have heard that people using Indy can develop Network Services on both platforms pretty easily. Indy is included with Borland, but can also be downloaded for free at: http://www.nevrona.com/Indy/indy.html [nevrona.com]
    • Borland stuff (JBuilder and, AFAIK the new C++ Builder) are made with Java now, so its the same group of files for both install, except the windows has a .exe file to run the app, and the linux version has a .sh file to run, other than that, it should be smooth sailing.

      FWIW, I downloaded JBuilder9 personal yesterday and have it installed on both my linux and winXP boxes, and they both work flawlessly with one another (including the project files).
    • I was recently doing something similar but lightweight, moving some code between Linux, OS X and Windows. The way that worked for me was to just use a central CVS repository then check out on to the relevant platforms. Three Windows "killer apps" in this were: cygwin [cygwin.com], which doesn't suck nearly as much as it used to and has a way handy gui package installer; Tortoise CVS [tortoisecvs.org] which is how CVS should be done; and Dev C++ [bloodshed.net] which, if nothing else, is the most convenient way of getting gcc, free software Win32 API's a

  • What about OS X? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:01PM (#6967160)
    It's weird. Most of the cross-platform toolkits assume that you will use VC++ on Windows, and don't support the Borland compiler very well, which is a shame. Trolltech also has a cross-platform environment (Qt), and they include OS X in there. I don't understand why Qt assumes VC++ on Windows, as opposed to Borland and/or GCC.

    I also don't understand making the effort to do Win32 and some sort of X11 interface, and not building an OS X one? Carbon is C based, and you should be able to build a Carbon wrapper.

    May not be a HUGE market, but the Mac market isn't THAT small., and it's MUCH bigger than Linux. Admittedly, there are probably about as many corporate Linux desktops as OS X desktops, but I know many Unix guys running OS X.

  • This could be good. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MagicMerlin ( 576324 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:01PM (#6967162)
    Borland C++ Builder was, for a time, the best C++ development environent available. C++ Builder 3 was an amazing product that was very tight, quick, and feature packed. Unfortunately after that Borland went into the long black Inprise period and has had some serious quality control isssues with their products.

    Also, MS released Visual Studio 6.0 which was a better compiler for non visual programming (most C++ is non visual programming these days). IMO, this will be a better development environemnt than MFC or Java (at least on windows). The question is, will it be better than VS 7.0/C# for application development?

    I hope this turns out to be good!
    • C++ Builder still poos all over VC++. The VCL is still and always has been better than the MFC. In terms of speed of development it is up there with VB without the stigma of being labelled a VB programmer.

      Borland have been pumping out great IDEs since Delphi 2.0 and nothing has changed. Once again I find myself wondering why the world is content to use Microsoft products.

  • Marketing execs: LISTEN UP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WTFmonkey ( 652603 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:04PM (#6967194)
    I am getting good and sick of every other product off the line having an "X" in it. Back in the day, it was true that products ending in "X" were easier for consumers to remember (Xerox, Kotex). Now, given that consumers have grown up a bit, it just looks silly.

    I am also sick of the use of the word "extreme." I do not want the Extreme Value Combo, I do not want to watch Extreme Television, I do not want to be a part of Extreme Programming. It's even worse when they use Xtreme. It was sorta cool during the (first) X-Games. After that, it just got lame.

    It's even got to the point where X as a substitute for 10 is unacceptable, simply because it looks dumb. Do not say "Version X," please say "Version 10."

    Everyone: do the world a favor and pull a "Clinton-exit-manuever" on the marketers in your office: sneak in after they leave and pry the "X" keys off of their keyboards. Thank you.

    • pull a "Clinton-exit-manuever"

      FYI, although the public doesn't care anymore, Rep. Bob Barr (R.-Ga.) asked for an official investigation into this matter which reported the following:

      GSA: "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy"

      GAO: "There was no [White House]record kept of any cords being cut or any damage to computers or copiers-- in general there was no proof of anything matching the allegati
    • wow that's funny. i wrote rant [otierney.net] about this very same topic just the other day on my website.
    • Let's do away with those silly products UNIX, Linux, and X-Windows!
      • X-Windows I kinda agree with, that's a bit annoying. UNIX has version names & numbers, and Linux has version numbers and distro names. If Red Hat released "Red Hat Linux Version X" then yeah, that'd be annoying. XTreme UNIX? Very annoying.

        You know why it's called a version number? Because it should be a number. What comes after OSX? Is it all of a sudden back to OS11? OSY? Or is it OSX.2? Or OSX2? (It's just an example, don't bother--point is, it's inherently inconsistent and confusing).


    • but what if the marketers are using the following keyboard they bought on eBay?


      IBM PS/2 Keyboard -- All X keys [ebay.com]

      This is an IBM PS/2 Keyboard with model number KB-7953. This keyboard has been modified over an entire summer so that every square shaped key has been replaced with an 'X' key.

      Every character key, almost all the keys on the numpad, the cursors, all of the function keys, and all of the numeric have been replaced. Only the tab, caps-lock, left and right shift, ctrl and alt, windows, return, a
    • You're rightX of courseX.

      The marketingX execsX needX to fixX thisX.

  • System requirements seem a bit extreme... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by printman ( 54032 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:05PM (#6967214) Homepage
    From the overview, system requirements are 512MB RAM minimum, 768MB recommended. That seems a tad bit bloated for an IDE... No thanks!

  • I Used to Love Borland IDE's (Score:5, Informative)

    by Serapth ( 643581 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:10PM (#6967260)
    Its nice to see Borland trying to fill the niche of Cross Platform compilers... I loved Borland back in the day. I learned C in microsoft Quick C, then once I got my hands on Borland C, then C++... there was no looking back. Until windows came about that is. Up until Visual Studio 6, Borland consistantly made the better IDE. It was truely a joy developing and debugging within the Borland IDE. Even the long departed OWL was a nicer framework then MFC at the time... atleast IMHO. Then things took a turn for the worse...

    I think its safe to say... since Visual Studio 6... the Microsoft product *IS* the IDE of choice to use on Windows. Actually, from what ive seen... since VS 7/.net... its the best damned IDE period! I think alot of people will agree with that... so many damned bells and wistles... its really hard to compete with Visual Studio these days. Actually... VS is the only reason I prefer programming on Wintel over linux. The linux API's are certainly nicer to work with... but from someone who got used to programming in Visual studio... going over to vi/emacs + make files is just toooooo damned painful for me.

    Somewhere along the way... borland released Borland CBuilder... wow... RAD development... without having to use a hooky ass language like VB... how great! So I gave it a shot. I loved it at first... then ran into soooooooo many quirks I was pulling my hair out. Not to mention, I hated the class framework ( VCL or something similar ). It really showed its Delphi roots, and im a C++ programmer for a reason!

    So, at 1000$ USD... does the new Borland compiler have a use? Sure it does... If I have to do cross platform, GUI based C++ applications in the future, and budget allows... Im all over this! I would much rather use a Borland IDE, then any linux build systems ( except possibly KDevelop... it might have come a far way since I checked last! ) But, this product is great, for traditionally windows based C++ developers, who have to do GUI apps on Linux/Unix. Biggest problem I see is... this isnt really a good answer for open source development. Ill explain below.

    The majority of open source code, is written to support the GCC compilers, and the most commonly available Open Source libraries, such as gzip to give an example. Now... in order to get cross platform support with the Borland compiler... with all the frills anyways... you would have to use the borland libraries... this is something I can imagine most opensource projects would shy away from. Not to say, this compiler wont compile code GCC would... or any such thing... Im just saying to really take advantage of its features... you will have to use the borland libraries. This isnt necisarrily a bad thing, but I think it will be a big hangup in the open source communities. Regardless, I hope to get my hands on this product for a better look.

    What I really wish for, is BorlandC# to be release, with target support for either a) Mono or b) a Borland written CLR. Probrably wishful thinking.
    • Disregard the part I had mentioned about having to use a borland framework to get cross platform features... I mis interpreted what exactly this product was... I had thought it also included the cross platform features of CBuilder, which appears to not be the case, or at the least... is not confirmed.

      Actually... from what I saw in the shockwave demo... this product is rather lame... its *JUST* an IDE, that has the ability to call out to various compilers and debuggers... Hey... thats kinda cool to be abl
    • in order to get cross platform support with the Borland compiler... with all the frills anyways... you would have to use the borland libraries... this is something I can imagine most opensource projects would shy away from.

      Couple questions:

      1. Why be limited to using the Borland compiler within Borland C++ BuilderX? Why not use the now tightly integrated GCC or Intel C++ compiler within Borland C++ BuilderX IDE? By the looks of the demo, it looks like even the various debuggers work the same way within

      • Actually, after watching the shockwave video, I got a different impression of what this product actually was. I was thinking it was more inline with CBuilder or Kylix, which truely do tie you into using one or another libraries, to truely exploit the full benefits.

        My thoughts after the fact... this is a @@$@#$'ing expensive IDE in the end. It doesnt do near as much as I thought it did. $1000 for this... ouch.

        I would rather spend the money of slickEdit or CodeWarrior... or any other integrated editer w
      • 1. BuilderX (from the demo) indeed supports whatever C++ compiler you want. I guess that is the beauty of C++ -- try finding Pascal's to do that on all the different systems.

        2. It appears that their GUI thingy is wxWindows with a Visual Basicy form designer on top. I imagine they are roundtripping design-time properties as code as in VS.NET and I believe also JBuilder instead of saving designer properties in .DFM files such as the case with Delphi.

        They also call their GUI thingy a "preview" which su

    • I use Visual Studio as my main compiler, because of it's excellent debugger, but I still prefer emacs for the long coding sessions. this article [kuro5hin.org] on k5 that I wrote awhile ago (site seems down right now) may help ease the jealousy.

  • Kha-ZAM!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by mod_parent_down ( 692943 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:11PM (#6967279)
    Damn! I want my name to be "Jonathon Khazam". Except, I wouldn't go around saying things like:

    Borland is a leader in C++ development

    I'd be all like "Khazam!!! MS can kizziss my kizzass!" People would dig that shit in press releases.

  • another comment posted a link to "screenshots" (actually a flash demo containing screenshots) here:
    http://www.borland.com/cbuilderx/tour/View_C++Buil derX%20Turbo%20Demo.htm [borland.com]

    does anyone else find it VERY ODD that a C++ IDE is written in Java Swing?

  • wxWindows support (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:28PM (#6967433)
    Anybody else notice the builtin support for wxWindows???

    Neat

  • Eclipse? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by enjo13 ( 444114 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:29PM (#6967439) Homepage
    Is this based on Eclipse? Borland was one of the original developers (along with IBM) who was investing in that project. (http://www.eclipse.org)

    It certainly looks like it to me.

    • Re:Eclipse? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by tagevm ( 152391 )
      Looks a lot more like it is based on JBuilder...and that would be more likely, wouldn't it?
    • Doesn't look like eclipse at all! Eclipse uses SWT which wraps native system widgets. This stuff uses Swing. It's really apparent if you look at the scrollbars.

  • Borland's dumb licensing continues (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @03:56PM (#6967739)
    For over five years now, Borland has divided its development products into three classes: personal, professional, and enterprise. It used to be that all three had similar licenses, but each level had more features than the previous version. All were suitable for professional development. The personal edition was ~$100, the professional ~$500, and enterprise ~$2500.

    Then, a few years ago, Borland changed this scheme. The professional version jumped up to ~$1000, and the enterprise beyond that. The catch is that at the same time they changed the license of the personal version so it cannot be used commercially or to develop commercial products--even low cost products. So now you have the $100 product that's essentially crippled, and to go to the next level, just to remove that one clause from the license, you have to spend $900. That's completely ridiculous.

    Please Borland, give it up. Why should I have to pay $1000 when there are other products at half the price? The answer is "I won't." I'll buy your competitor's products.

  • Three Primary Reasons This is Interesting (Score:4, Informative)

    by SilentMajority ( 674573 ) on Monday September 15, 2003 @04:37PM (#6968202) Homepage
    Three most interesting bits found within all the marketing crap (emphasis/bold added by me)http://www.borland.com/cbuilderx/pdf/cbx_datash eet.pdf [borland.com]:

    1. C++BuilderX development environment runs on Windows, Linux, and Solaris

    2. Tight integration between C++BuilderX and multiple industry leading C and C++ compilers -- Borland C++ for Windows, Intel 32-bit compilers for Windows and Linux, Microsoft Visual C++ 7.1, Sun Forte C++, Metrowerks C++ and the GNU C++ Compiler Collection -- keeps you in control of your technology decisions.

    3. C++BuilderX is designed to simplify the concurrent management of source code through tight integration with Borland(R) StarTeam,(R) an automated configuration and change management system, as well as Concurrent Versions System (CVS), Rational(R) ClearCase,(R) and Microsoft(R) Visual SourceSafe.(R)

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