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Apple Businesses

Inprise/Borland Pledge Support For Mac OS X 94

Posted by HeUnique from the that's-good-to-know dept.
Over at Infoworld, there is an article about Borland which announced at the Borland Developers' conference that JBuilder will be available next year for Mac OS X with support for the Apple's upcoming Aqua GUI. The article also mentions that Inprise/Borland is now commited to the developers community. Thoughts, anyone?
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Inprise/Borland pledge its support for Mac OS X More

Inprise/Borland pledge its support for Mac OS X

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  • In Apple's ~20 year history, they have only lost money a couple of those years, big loses yes, but more than made up by the profits they've enjoyed the last three years. If you want to rant about Apple or anyone else for that matter, thats fine, just do a little research first, or consider your target audience.
  • The phrase 'monopoly' comes to mind, here.
  • I have to occasionally run JBuilder 3.0 at work.

    It is the most unstable piece of commercial I have to use at work. Generally my NT Workstation has uptimes measured in weeks, mainly due to me ensuring that all device drivers are current. However once I run JBuilder I often have to reboot. JBuilder seems to want to write directly to screen memory during startup.

    If I can get hold of the debugger copy of Windows NT I'll have a look to see what it does do. I did do simillar once with Notes under Win 3.11, and was astounded by the number of incorrect calls that POS was making.

  • This should be a really good thing for the MacOS because up until now the only game in town has been Metrowerks' CodeWarrior (or Apple's own stuff). I think this will be a Good Thing to keep Metrowerks from resting on its laurels. Now, I don't really care for JBuilder personally and I like CodeWarrior a lot, so I hope they can still survive well... but I hope that they both become better products from the competition.
  • Those guys have been making losses for years. If it wasn't for the fact that idiots who can't handle complexity like 2 buttons still need their cut iMacs, they would have gone down the tubesd ages ago.
    • AAPL has been making profit [yahoo.com] for years
    • As someone else said, you seem to be having trouble with a keyboard
    • What would you rather have those idiots using?

    --

  • Apples don't have very much vitamin C. People may actually code faster when they sneeze, due to the velocity of the air expelling from the lungs.
  • Actually Since apparently your brains leaked out during this post you probably should get an Imac...

    First losses? Apple is the number #1 selling computer for the last 2 years. Stupid dumb people use them? Eat Shit. I use NT all day long at work and Linux... I can't wait to get home to my 'stupid' mac because it is about 3 times faster. It will clean off the floor with NT. Not to meantion have you ever used OS X? Or done anything else? Almost all of the computer shit you touch has somehow been influenced by Apple... Next time think before you talk out your ass.

    Or next time you wanna see something that shaves 45 minutes off my rendertime over NT or linux, check out my stupid crappy little mac...
  • This comment perfectly illustrates the effects of using copius amounts of drugs. Or not.
  • Regarding loss of foothold: I think they still have at least that, but not much more. Delphi and BCB enjoy I think ~5-10% of the windows dev tools market (if I recall a survey correctly).

    I think Borland does "have the stuff" to make it happen. Not the least part of which is a balance sheet you could choke a horse with ($230 M in cash).
  • I've been a Metrowerks user (and sometime fan) since CodeWarrior DR/1 in 1994. When Metrowerks first arrived on the scene, it was incredibly good, because it was incredibly fast, it was the first stable C++ adhering to the draft standard available for the Mac, the interface didn't get in your way, and most importantly, it had PowerPC support. It did have a few weaknesses, the big one being no support for multiple build targets.

    Metrowerks aptly demonstrated just how poor a job Symantec (the market leader at the time) was doing. Symantec abandoned their Mac development tools shortly thereafter, leaving Metrowerks as the single source for usable Mac development tools.

    Over the past six years, Metrowerks has added a lot of features to the CodeWarrior IDE without stopping to consider how they impact usability. It is incredibly ackward to use multiple-target projects in CodeWarrior, simply because they kludged-in the multi-target functionality rather than redesigning the IDE from scratch. The CodeWarrior class browser doesn't hold a candle to kdevelop. (For the aesthetically sensitive, the present version of CodeWarrior also happens to be very ugly, those black tab things in the project window - yuck.)

    I would hope that the new competition from ProjectBuilder and Borland's junk helps refocus Metrowerks; I used to like the IDE. Now I put up with it simply because I don't have a choice.

    Competition is a good thing. I have to wonder how Borland expects to make money off of Mac development tools, however. Metrowerks was never profitable, to the best of my knowledge.

  • What's scary is, I actually love Compaq's keyboards. Compaq's mice say Logitech on the bottom, by the way.

    --

  • Last time I checked, I could still have gcc and everything else I need for much less than $100. As a matter of fact, I can have it for $0 :).

    gcc is a Good Thing. However, it's not an IDE. For the $100 CW gave you compile/link for four languages (well, one's pascal...) a decent debugger, a bunch o' useful tools (viz zoneranger), a fully-developed C++ framework (powerplant), a shwack of documentation (in pre-internet-explosion days a big deal) and a fantastic text editor. An IDE should be one-stop coding. Metrowerks gave me that.... for a hundred bucks. I gotta admit that what really hooked me on CW was the text editor. It sounds stupid, but it's what you're looking at 90% of coding time so it's worthwhile having a nice one. vi and emacs are functional I suppose but, ultimately, are designed for console use and have the finesse of a rowboat (flame at will). Kwrite has syntax colouring, but is so out of line with every other editor in the world that using it feels like playing scrabble in a foreign language. When I write for the Solaris box, I use CW, save the file to the ethershare volume and telnet to run gcc.

    Is it obvious that I'm a hopeless fan?

    So, what Borland is really offering is a whole line of tools capable of running in all important platforms. For a developer it is a heavenly deal.

    CodeWarrior is also available on Winders and there's a Linux version as well (redhat only as near as I can tell). I can't vouch for the quality of experience on the "secondary" platforms, though.

  • Personaly, i don't program so this really doesn't mean much to me being i am a mac user. But i will say that it makes me happy because i see that other companies are finaly starting to support the Mac. Hardware companies are finaly starting to make stuff for us mac users(3DFX and Nvidia for example). And Apple is finally making a OS that doesn't suck( hopefully)that can run on both processors ( according to rumors... whether they put it out on the market for X86 processors is another story). I got into the mac cause Micro$oft didn't have its greedy hands in it. And i started getting into linux for the same reason. And just for you knowledge about the Repbublican party... when the parties were first in this country a couple hundred years ago it was the republicans that took the same stands on issues that the democrats do today. At least the democrates have been consistent in their existence.
  • That is definitely an incorrect assumption. I don't know much about c++, but Delphi is a distinct minority to VB (at least in the corporate world I live in). Not that I'm knocking Delphi, it's a great product.
    ---
  • Don't forget that MW has the coolest shirts of any programming environment on any platform.

    "KICKING ASS AND WRITING CODE" -- that one, like, actually *attracts* chicks. At least it's good for a laugh

    "BLOOD SWEAT CODE" -- wearing it right now, baby.

    Et cetera :)
  • Uh... don't be so sure, the latest developer CD contains Java2 and they have ported HotSpot to the PPC/Mach/BSD/MacOSX platform. They've wrapped all the NeXTSTEP/OpenStep/WebObjects APIs to be accesible from Java. They have also ported Swing to work with the underlying NS* classes.
  • When Apple was almost gone, Microsoft saved them by releasing the only piece of quality software for the system: Excel.

    Um. Actually, Excel was released for MacOS first, when MSFT was still a comparatively minor player. Windows 1.0 was written for the express purpose of being able to run Excel on DOS.

    Other than that, nice work ;)
  • And what if your user needs include providing a cross-platform application that presents an identical interface to the user, no matter what platform they're using?
    Sure, platform-dependent usability works, but what happens when you have to go back and retrain your users because of the differences in your application between platforms? Support costs go up, and it's all going to have to be redone when the fixes go in to Java anyway.
  • If you read the original comment, it stated that Apple was "better" because it made more than Dell/Gateway etc. Having control over the marketspace of your product makes that rather easier, don't you think?

    I didn't mean a monopoly on computing. You seem to be forgetting the clone fiasco of a few years ago.

  • Compaq keyboards are fantastic... I'm not sure whether I prefer the Compaq kb at work, or the Logitech at home. Many other keyboards suck ass.
  • I was referring to hardware. Specifically the computer itself. The comment was made that Apple was "better" because it made more than Dell/Gateway etc.

    Software, I have no complaint with :)

  • ...run more than 5 minutes without crashing, at least on "hello world" size programs?

    Perhaps they can progess to simple dialogs from that point.

    Sorry, never tried a version that didn't crash within five minutes.
  • What if my users need cross-platform apps? That depends. Alternatives to Java include Citrix (windows into an NT machine) and web applications. Might Java be the right solution for some hypothetical situation? Sure, but I don't think it is the common situation.

    In practice, most corporations run pretty much exclusively in Windows, so the "cross platform" nature of Java is not a big selling point in that environment. (Which is the environment probably 80-90% of the software gets written for.) Shrinkwrap is another important market, but customers of shrinkwrap tend to be very particular about the UI matching that of their preferred OS.
  • I use Forte Community edition and quite honestly its a nice little IDE. its written in Java and its heavy weight to be sure but its still nice and it does go. With 256MB of ram its prolly a dream on win98.. on NT 4.0... it was not so stable tho :(


    If you think education is expensive, try ignornace
  • Wow! I think I just shit a turd smarter than you. Give me your mailing address and I'll send it too you... you two will have a nice conversation, especially since my friend here is a close relative of Microsoft! :-)
  • Mr. or Ms. or Mss. sig_nazi,

    Let me thank you of your excellent way you enhanced the reading experience of my .sig. As you can see, I followed your suggestions and adapted my .sig.

    However, please note that I provided my e-mail address, albeit in a crippled form. The way to decipher it is stated in my user info. In future, please make use of this way to correct me.

    Since you got Berlin in your e-mail, I assume you know that National Sozialisten (or Nazi's) were members of a political party. This party had a Sicherheidsdienst or SD (security force) and a Geheimer Staats Polizei or Gestapo (Secret state police). These were the really creepy guys trying to weed out incorrect / unarischer behaviour.

    All these form a very dark page in the history of Germany and Europe. Please keep this in mind when you take a nickname like this.
    Since there are other nicks with nazi in them, I posted this comment on /.. I will e-mail it to you as well.

    ---

  • what's the news really. (Score:4)

    by jilles ( 20976 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @02:11AM (#941239) Homepage
    Considering that the whole thing is 100% Java, it is more surprising that they actually have to port the thing than that they ported it. The whole aqua thing is just a free ride on Sun's announced port of jdk 1.3 to Mac OS X which will include an aqua theme for swing.

    It would be nice though if they would also consider porting delphi to Mac OS. It shouldn't be to hard considering they are already porting it to linux. With support for mac OS they would have support for all major consumer desktops.

  • Why not TRY it? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ....even if you have a Mac (well, as long as you have a working Java2 SDK - ie, Linux, Windows, Solaris and now OSX). On www.borland.com is the Foundation edition, which is cutdown (ie, you can't do EJB's and I dont think it has the database controls), but hell, its (beer) free.

    Try it, especially if you have previously tried JBuilder 1,2 or 3 (its version 3.5, 100% pure java - others were 80% java, 20% delphi)

    :)

    N

  • I am not sure on this but was'nt Delphi a flop..... i could be completely wrong but all i hear about is VB ...

    The article talks not only about Max OS/X, but also about Kylix, the delphi-IDE port for Linux. According to the article, this IDE supports C, C++, Delphi and VB. Whether that's a good thing or not I do not know, but it sure is interesting.


    ---
  • Now, here's a debate that'll never end:

    Is it better to take advantage of the advantages of a non-platform-independent feature, or remain pure?

    One the purity side, there is a lot to be said about violating that purity. The moment you start adding platform-dependent features, you must start providing platform-dependent documentation, support, etc. It opens up a whole new can of worms. And each of those works is one of the reasons platform-independence was chosen in the first place.

    On the advantages side, the people who paid for the feature want to use it. And if use of the feature in a platform-dependent manner wouldn't damage the other platforms, why not take advantage of it?

    I have a philosophy about using DHTML in websites. Currently, I say use it to dress things up, if you will, but don't put an functionality in it that can't be had elsehow.

    I think the same philosophy should apply here. The mousewheel is a WONDERFUL innovation (heh, sorry, had to throw that word in there). Anyone who has learned to use almost can't live without it. There is some very simple JNI hooks that could be added to implement it. However, if someone didn't have a wheel mouse (or was on a platform that didn't support it), no functionality would be lost. You could still scroll your windows in the traditional manner. So, what's the harm?

    As for the file-chooser, my understanding (which is not infallible) is that it is an issue on every platform. In which case, Borland could've provided a work-around for JBuilder solution and still been platform independent. Heck, the solution could've even been their own 100% Java File-Chooser dialog and they could still claim 100% Java.

    Still, to be fair, in the case of the two features (multi-file choosing and mousewheel), these are both bugs in Sun's JDK, not in Borland's code. Hoepfully, Sun is working on these. I just think it's sad that Borland could've easily worked around these bugs and didn't.

  • Now when they can produce a version of Delphi (I love that environment/language) that will compile for Win32, Linux & OsX from a single source... then i will be impressed :)

    Isnt that why Microsoft gave us C#? :)

  • Considering that the whole thing is 100% Java, it is more surprising that they actually have to port the thing than that they ported it.



    Did you think about that it probably produces native code? The compiler will need some writing, atleast. But what I cannot understand is that why people code Java because they seem to only make Java-programs that run under Windows only. Native win32-code would give a lot better results.


  • "... their cut iMacs" You aparently don't seem to be able to use your keyboard very well, so a two button mouse is out of the question...

  • I'm sure that my karma will plummit for pointing this out, but come on HeUnique, where is your sense of grammar?

    I am not sure about your karma (or mine, after this) but your credentials as a grammar nazi are irrevocably lost for spelling 'plummet' as you just did.

  • I agree with you that Inprise is well out of line saying "This is the first real development tool on the Mac for the last eight years". This is marketing in its worst microsoftian form. Probably they meant "This is the first real development tool WE DEVELOP FOR the Mac for the last eight years".

    But:
    2. When IDEs on "other platforms" were going for hundreds (sometimes hundreds and hundreds) of dollars, metrowerks offered a "discover" package that compiled C, C++, Java and Pascal for $100.

    Last time I checked, I could still have gcc and everything else I need for much less than $100. As a matter of fact, I can have it for $0 :). Even if I choose to order the CD, the price will not be much higher.

    A fact to be noted is that Borlan/Inprise still has a fairly large group of faithful developers, even some from the legendary Turbo Pascal days, and that the company has been moving toward the Linux crowd for a while now. So, what Borland is really offering is a whole line of tools capable of running in all important platforms. For a developer it is a heavenly deal.

    Maybe the Mac people will still keep using Code Warrior for a long time, but developers just arriving at the platform will probably choose the tools that are used to.
  • Hm. Well, he never said he was the 'spelling nazi'.

    -vl
  • Since Apple has been making unprompted efforts to open their code up (see Darwin, quicktime streaming server) this is one strange monopoly that gives tools to potential competitors to enter their markets.

    Apple may be the closest thing the world has right now to a traditional OS vendor who 'gets' open source and is moving their business model step by step to retool for the new world that is coming.

    Are they 100% there right now? No. Could they do a 180 and retreat back into pure closed source? It's possible but becomes less likely with each section of their code that they open up.

    How long is it going to be before visualPDF and the rest of the closed goodies are reverse-engineered in such a way that an open-source Darwin load can be compiled on Intel, and loaded with an OSX work-alike on top? I don't know but I think that Apple is preparing for the day. They have certainly made it possible.

    DB
  • > Still, to be fair, in the case of the two features (multi-file choosing and mousewheel), these are both bugs in Sun's JDK, not in Borland's code. Hoepfully, Sun is working on these.

    Mouse wheel support is planned for the next JDK (version 1.4, aka "Merlin"). You can find a PDF with all the proposed features at here [javasoft.com]

    Not sure about multi-file choosing, but other file chooser enhancements are listed. If you want multi-file choosing, request it, because the draft is open for comments until next week.
  • It is a good idea to exploit OS specific features and nuances. Netscape and Mozilla aren't unpopular with Windows users just because they already have IE, it's because they're constrained to a fairly cross-platform interface design. In the case of Navigator, it's limited to the crappy Motif toolkit, and Mozilla is limited by its own -- most users have no desire to hack my own XUL to make the browser look and feel like they want it to.

    Platform specificity is good -- would you write a Windows app and make Alt the primary modifier key? Would you write a Mac application and make Control the modifier key? Well, only if you didn't want people to use the program and/or be happy with you.

    Don't underdo it, and don't overdo it. Business logic is pretty portable, and presentation logic is cake -- if you're integrating the two, you're doing it wrong.
  • Competition is a good thing.

    obviously. Any statement to the contrary would imply you were a winders user :-)

    Seriously, CW's last major improvement was the java RAD. While I have one issue with it (complete code rewrite for even the smallest change) it's otherwise really good. The intro of the RAD, however, was inspired by the possibility that developers would move to another platform and ide for their java designing. With java's semi-deserved WORA rep, that was a possibility metrowerks had to consider seriously.

    For the aesthetically sensitive, the present version of CodeWarrior also happens to be very ugly, those black tab things in the project window - yuck.

    black tab things? You mean the files/design/link order/targets tabs? (mine are grey). I kinda like those, even though they're not appearance manager compliant... I think the project manager in general is well laid out. Even for big projects, the whole thing takes up only 20% of my screen real-estate and I get access to the necessary-but-not-often-used windows on demand but without clutter. My biggest aesthetic complaint is the lack of splash screen ("is it on yet?")

    It is incredibly ackward to use multiple-target projects in CodeWarrior

    I must admit you've got me there, I only rarely build to anything other than PPC release and debug. Heck, I skip debug most of the time...

  • you're only a monopoly if you control the market baby. ya they control the mac market but that's like saying gillette has a monopoly on the mach 3 market. having total control over one's product does not constitute having a monopoly. microsoft is a monopoly because they have absurd amounts of control over other peoples' products. see the difference?
  • Is it obvious that I'm a hopeless fan?

    Yes, but you are right. I think CW is a very good, very powerful development environment. Using GNU you have to dig a little for the tools. There some good cross-platform IDEs around, with good text editors (I wouldn't use emacs or vi too, so I won't bite that one :)).

    CodeWarrior is also available on Winders and there's a Linux version as well

    It is, but it never reached the mainstream in any of these platforms. It was always looked at as "a nice thing to have", but mainly as a Mac development tool. Also, people tend to get attached to their tools. To see the latter point in action, show a tipical Linux development enviroment to a Visual Studio developer and sit back to enjoy the reaction.

  • Dell's mice are Logitech too. Oh oh, a Logitech monopoly :)

    --
    dman123 forever!
  • Mac OS X is a long way from the old Mac OS. It is nearly impossible to create a competitive Java VM for the old Mac OS because it's lack of PMT, and other wierdness with how threads work and such. Mac OS X is a full blown UNIX-based platform, so Java is a much more direct port. I'm fairly confident that they can create a solid Java VM for OS X.
  • We already have standards. You can get the latest version by typing "vi /usr/doc/HOWTO/Hardware-HOWTO". This isn't a joke, I'm dead serious. The linux standard is the kernel, so the sooner we convince manufacturers to provide modules for the KERNEL for their devices, the better we'll be. It could be worse.. they could be creating must-run-as-root daemons with closed-source APIs. I say we formalize an existing standard.. afterall, it's worked quite well so far.

  • 2. When IDEs on "other platforms" were going for hundreds (sometimes hundreds and hundreds) of dollars, metrowerks offered a "discover" package that compiled C, C++, Java and Pascal for $100.

    Borland has a long history of providing low cost tools. When Turbo Pascal first came out, it took the market by storm because of it's cost (not to forget about speed of compliation). Borland has consistently provided tools below $100 at least into the mid-90's.

    I don't know if they will keep up this tradition, but in the past they have been a strong advocate of low cost tools.

  • Borland has a long history of providing low cost tools. When Turbo Pascal first came out, it took the market by storm because of it's cost (not to forget about speed of compliation). Borland has consistently provided tools below $100 at least into the mid-90's.
    It's true that the Turbo series of compilers was extremly fast, but the speed of the compiled code left something to be desired. I would prefer a compiler that is a little slower, but generates good code to one that is fast but generated slow code.
  • Is there any use in trying to compete against PB.app and IB.app? I mean, Borland was never bad exactly; but the NeXT-derived development envioronment blows everything else out of the water.
  • What were they commited to in the past?

  • Great Move for Borland (Score:4)

    by Metrol ( 147060 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @01:07AM (#941262) Homepage
    They've pretty much lost they're foothold on Windows over the years to MS's tools. By heavily supporting Linux and Mac they're filling a great niche that's been left open for far too long.

    Another possible offshoot of this is having them seen as a great development platform to program for multiple OS's. If that becomes the case, they could make a serious run at MS's suite of tools. This is just good news all the way around. Hope Borland has the stuff to make it happen.
  • Why am I respondinmg to an obvious Troll?

    Apple only lost money for 2 quarters. The losses were not huge. At all other times they made huge gains.

    Have you actually used a Mac? One button works very well. You don't need more than that. Would you prefer a 5 button mouse? Is there a huge advantage to excessive complexity, or do you just like domonstrating your 1337 skills?
  • Fuller stressed that Inprise/Borland is fully refocused on its core customer base -- the developer community.

    Well it seems that are trying to revamp their image, and its good to hear! Borland was cool back in that day!! I started programming on Turbo Pascal, moved on to Turbo C++ and with all its quirks the thing ran just fine on a nice little IBM 386 machine!!! Never been so happy with newer progamming environments till i started using Emacs that is!

    Also notice the emphasis on saying that they will not release buggy code (which is really difficult when it comes to compilers and RAD tools). This is more of a "Look we are trying to change.. give us a chance" news release! Ohh... yeah Mac OS/X that too... but look here at us!! we can change promise. I am not sure on this but was'nt Delphi a flop..... i could be completely wrong but all i hear about is VB (not a windoz coder myself.. into server side code!)

  • you've tested a 1.0 version ;) 1.0 was 20%Java - 80% Delphi 2.0 was 70%Java - 30% Delphi 3.0 was 80%Java2 - 20%Delphi 3.5 is 100% Java2 made ! The use of mixed Java+Native/Delphi cause lots of troubles to Borland as they encounter number of thread synchronizations issues between Native and Java. The 3.5 is very impressive - not only because it is 100%Java made, but because it is fast and very stable! Nowadays JBuilder just became one of the best Java tool you can get (including Netbeans), and the foundation edition free (like the wind!) it is just cool ! About Delphi, cross-platform it is done and called Kylix :) Do not expect Kylix to directly compile your existing .dpr (delphi project) directly, as you need some adaptation to your code ! To get a cross-platform project you need : - to use the VCL - to avoid Windoz trics - etc ... But once you did this you get true Linux bin, true Windoz bin, etc ... Kylix do not compete JBuilder, it is rather a complement for some situations: You need a small app that is cross platform and should run in the less memory possible, then Kylix is for you ! You need powerfull enterprise solutions (distributed architectures, heterogenous cross platforms solutions) then JBuilder is for you ! About MacOS support: *support* does not mean *port*, ie supporting an OS means that if you get a problem running the soft on this OS you will get help ! JBuilder run on any Java2 OS (including Linux,Solaris, Win32, HP/UX and AS400 ...), but Borland only support part of them ... And now ... welcome to the MacOSX Support :)
  • ...but, if Borland/Inprise is spending all their time and energy producing making the same product cross-platform, is this going to have an effect on the quality of their software.

    It would be great if they could implement something like the VCL in every version of their product, regardless of the platform it runs on. The added advantage being that it makes porting apps a lot easier.
  • In the past, Borland has been committed to 100% Java.

    As an example, their latest incarnation of JBuilder (version 3.5), is written entirely in Java. The same code runs on Linux, Windows, etc.

    However, there are drawbacks. The "Add File" dialog, which is a JFileChooser, won't let you add multiple files -- due to a bug in the JDK.

    Also, the mousewheel doesn't work because Swing doesn't support it.

    In both cases, Borland thought it was better to remain pure than provide workarounds -- especially a platform-specific workaround. Developers have been complaining insanely about more than just these two features at Borland's JBuilder Newsgroup [jbuilder.ide].

    I certainly hope their change in focus shift will resolve these problems and make JBuilder, and the rest of their line-up, better products.

  • Of course not, me are the spelling nazi.
  • We've been using the Borland Java "suite" for applications development at work, and I've found: 1) JBuilder 3.5 Enterprise is a great tool. Fast compiling, stable, etc. (As long as your machine has enough RAM to handle the requirements of the VM...) 2) Inprise AppServer is a useful tool, but still has enough little annoyances to aggrivate anyone. (Mostly with remote deploys) The Inprise AppServer (development liscense) comes with JBuilder Enterprise... Having support from Borland (and the BSD core, of course) might actually make the Mac a serious software development platform again...
  • Yeah. Apple pretty much has their 10% marketshare locked up. Monopoly indeed!


    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • ---
    Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a sick mind (Terry Pratchet)

    Just so you know, a poor sig quote is the sign of a complete rube!!! Okay, let's use some standardization and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your sig. Like Kylix, or even VB, most programming languages have certain standards: standard APIs, standard libraries, and each language has it's own syntax. Believe it or not, sigs have standards, too, particularly when quoting a passage or something somebody said.

    The most common standard in a sig is to differentiate it from the post, either by italicizing it or by separating it with a
    ---
    cute little set of dashes. You've chosen the former but the surest way to segregate your sig from the rest of your comment is to do both. Like so:

    ---
    Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a sick mind (Terry Pratchet)

    Another common tactic is to use the <TT> tag, but I personally prefer italics. Okay that's the first bit, but that's left up to personal taste. I've singled you out because your sig is tacky.

    Alright, first since it's a quotation, try using quotation marks. We have puncuation for a reason. Second, when attributing a quotation to it's source, you should probably use a dash, which, in standard ASCII text is usually represented by two minus/dash signs. So, your sig should probably look more like this:

    ---
    "Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a sick mind." -- Terry Pratchet

    Oh, you'll also note that I added a final puncation mark, a full-stop, a period to the end of that quote. This is my biggest gripe because it isn't just about breaking standards, you've actually broken a law. Proper grammar, spelling and puncuation are important in your sig because it's not permanent. You can change it at any time in your preferences page [slashdot.org] and it fixes it everywhere. Oh, and before you say, "Well, Pratchet said more after that and I didn't want to include it all so it's not the end of a sentence; I just didn't put it all there," please remember your friend the ellipsis... Demonstrated again, the ellipsis... Used ... you guessed it, for pauses or, when quoting something or someone, to indicate part of the passage was omitted.

    Okay, to summarize: formatting is your choice, but bear in mind that your sig should stand out from your comment. Properly quoting a person is a method of standards. Why write your own component library when you could just use QT and get controls everybody already understands? (Or, like me, use Kylix when it's released.) Finally, terminate your sentences. Bad grammar, spelling and puncuation in a sig are really only ever appropriate if it's meaningful in context, i.e. it's ironic. Otherwise, make sure you use it. If multiple exclamation points are a sure sign of a sick mind, then unterminated sentences are a sure sign of an unused mind

    That said, it's time you got yourself a new sig. Thank you!!!
  • Microsoft(R) Visual Basic(TM), or another Object Basic implementation?
  • The compiler will need some writing, atleast.

    Are you sure of that? I've got the impression that javac is actually a java application. Certainly on the Mac, javac starts the JVM. In WinNT, the only other OS where I've compiled java, its memory use, even when compiling HelloWorld.java, is pretty consistent with a JVM.

  • When will you folks get this right? "Aqua" is a UI. "Aqua" is the style of the interface elements. "Aqua" is NOT Mac OS X. You cannot "port to Aqua." You can port to POSIX, Carbon, Cocoa, and Java on Mac OS X. You can not port a program from one OS to another OS' GUI. Please research before you write. PLEASE.

    Thank you...

    --

  • Re:what's the news really. (Score:3)

    by Eric Albert ( 109639 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @07:17AM (#941275) Homepage
    "Sun's announced port of JDK 1.3 to X"? Hardly. Apple's porting Sun's code to X -- and implementing all of the native side of the Java classes, which is no small task -- and Apple's writing the Aqua plaf from scratch. Give credit where credit is due....
  • Porting isn't quite the right word, but just as different bugs come up in a product on the Windows, Linux and Solaris JDKs, there will surely be issues to work out that are Mac specific.. especially with a brand new VM.
  • Am I missing something? MacOSX's #1 development tool [apple.com] will be bundled with every copy of the OS.
  • By heavily supporting Linux and Mac they're filling a great niche that's been left open for far too long.

    I would rather see the niche filled by Metrowerks CodeWarrior.

    Another possible offshoot of this is having them seen as a great development platform to program for multiple OS's.

    My version of CodeWarrior allows me to code for Mac, Windows or Java from any Windows 9x/NT or Macintosh. It also supports Power Point and the Microsoft Foundataion Classes. I'm a little behind the times with Metrowerks but they have expanded support for Linux and Solaris, not to mention they've always provided development tools for the Playstation.

    CodeWarrior also produces faster and slimmer code than Mircosoft Visual C++, comparable to gnu g++. I've used all three, CodeWarrior, M$ Visual C and Borland, and I definitely see CodeWarrior as the most versatile and the easiest to use.
  • You are missing the point. Sure I can make gcc cross compile to anything from my 68HC11 to my Coldfire all the way up to Linux or Win32 apps. This is all very nice, but it dosen't address toolkit/library issues.

    QT does ease the pain of cross platform GUI dev. However QT is far from ideal in many, many ways. If Borland can keep the VCL very compatible between Win32/Linux, then I can literally write one piece of code including GUI/Socket/Database code and never port a single line of any of it. Will Code Warrior allow you to do that?

    If you are coding device drivers all day you probably wouldn't care, but I do database front ends for a living and this would be nice option for someone like me.

    Besides, is having a choice ever a bad thing?
  • Good point! I guess Borland and Apple want to expand to as large an audience as possible - if a developer is used to Borland's/Inprise's tools, so be it. But the NeXT tools you mention (IB, PB, WOBuilder, etc.), absolutely kick ass. If people would just use them, they would be impressed. I used several development environments over the past couple of years and they only leave me yearning for my NeXT/WebObjects development tools. And all the Java snobs out there should free their minds alittle (oh sorry, you can't "free your minds", you've gotta wait for the garbage collector to do that for you :-) and take the couple of days required to learn Obj-C... you'll be a better programmer for it.
  • It would be great if they could implement something like the VCL in every version of their product, regardless of the platform it runs on. The added advantage being that it makes porting apps a lot easier.

    They are working on this - its called CLX. You might find this interesting:

    http://www.borland.com/about/press/2000/trolltec h.html

  • Lost their foothold...? I've always been under the impression that tools like C++Builder/Delphi were more popular than products like VC++/VB.

  • uphill fight... (Score:5)

    by Frymaster ( 171343 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @01:25AM (#941283) Homepage Journal
    "This is the first real development tool on the Mac for the last eight years,"

    What the hell? I'm stunned that Borland would make such a statement. CodeWarrior is most definitely a "real development tool"... oh, and it does java rad too (although even a small change in the RAD builder rewrites all RAD code forcing you to do some fancy copy/paste...)

    Borland may be surprised to find that the Mac community really loves their CodeWarrior, and for good reasons:
    1. When all had abandoned the mac, Metrowerks toughed it out and gave us some pretty hot stuff.
    2. When IDEs on "other platforms" were going for hundreds (sometimes hundreds and hundreds) of dollars, metrowerks offered a "discover" package that compiled C, C++, Java and Pascal for $100.
    3. Everyone knows mac programming can be a bit of a black art (just how many times do I need to call moreMasters()? three? oops... let's try four) Their response? CodeWarriorU. For free. If you're of the opinion that Dan Parks Sydow can't write (and he can't) you're grateful...
    4. If you download code for the mac it's almost always in an .mcp format. Heck, even Apple does this... not a great vote of confidence for MPW. Mind you, with java it's not such a big deal, but it's helped ingrain CW into the Mac psyche.
    5. Merchandise. Will Borland offer boxers as cool as the PowerPlant ones? Will their mascot be cooler than Arnold? Hm. Probably not.

  • I'm sure that my karma will plummit for pointing this out, but come on HeUnique, where is your sense of grammar?

    For starters, I'm a little confused about the past-present tense in the first sentence. Your sentence makes sense, but you might have said it better like this:

    Infoworld [infoworld.com] has an article [article.link] about Borland's announcement at the Borland Developers' conference - JBuilder will be available next year for Mac OS X with support for the Apple's upcoming Aqua GUI.
    Why does Developers' conference get an apostrophe but developers community doesn't? The last complete sentence is utter persiflage and should have been left out.

    Would a Slashdot author please make these corrections and then moderate my post down?

  • Advisor: "General, Italy has just entered the war!"

    General: "So?"

    Advisor: "They're on our side!"

    General: "Noooooooooo!"

  • Uh-huh. And that's why I'm not on the Java bandwagon: It leads to cross-platform but distinctly second-rate products.

    Do you think the users of the software care how cross-platform it is? Or how "pure" it is? No, they just care about how well it works. And if the mouse wheels doesn't work, they won't be happy.

    A cross-platform development tool makes engineering easier, but making engineering easier should not be the primary goal. Delivering software that meets the needs of users should be the primary goal.
  • Well, I think Borland were absolutely right in not providing platform-specific workarounds. That's why I use Java - so I don't have to worry about all the niggling little differences between platforms that you end up having to deal with when using normal GUI toolkits.

  • Re:But why support Apple at all? (Score:4)

    by MouseR ( 3264 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @04:20AM (#941288) Homepage
    The phrase 'monopoly' comes to mind, here.

    Monopoly isn't a phrase. It's a word. Just like dumb.

    That was a dumb, unthought of BS comment is a phrase.

    The mere thought of someone saying Apple holds a monopoly with it's 8-9% marketshare dims my hope for global intelligence. is my answer.
  • Apple isn't the only one. Compaq holds a monopoly too! They only ship Compaq branded mice and keyboards with all their PCs! The nerve!
    --
  • Back in my Amiga days in 1985, Borland ran many full-page in Amiga magazines proclaiming support for the Amiga and that products were imminent. None ever shipped.

    It's been 15 years, and I'm still holding a grudge.

    If you can't buy it TODAY, it's vaporware.

  • Re:what's the news really. (Score:4)

    by jilles ( 20976 ) on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @04:35AM (#941291) Homepage
    I shouldn't be answering to this but I'm bored:
    - There's not much point in compiling java natively, at best you get a few percents additional performance but you lose dynamic binding, which is a very usefull feature worth at least a few percentage points. Check out the benchmarks and not just those provided for towerJ.
    - Java servlets are deployed on servers, those servers can be anything running a java virtual machine, for instance a mainframe from IBM or linux.
    - Last time I checked, borland did not include a static compiler. Static java compilers are very much a niche market since they do not offer the performance boost most people expect. The reason for that is that the assumption that java performs bad because it is not compiled natively is plain wrong. It's not the bytecode but the excessive use of OO and dynamic binding that makes things slow.

    So whoever moderated this guy up, please moderate it down again, it's an obvious troll or at best the response of someone who has had his head stuck in the ground for the past few years. Any of the arguments in this post have been made dozens, if not hundreds of times on this site alone.
  • Generally, cross-platform code is better, cleaner code. Developing for multiple platforms simultaneously encourages modularity and abstraction and other neat things.

    Disclaimer: I'm not a programmer so I don't really know what I'm talking about, but that's OK. :-)

    --

  • Lighten up, Windows is as proprietary and horrible as any other OS out there. Also, if your happiness is limited because of Apple and Linux, you will probably go postal when they bust up M$.
  • Are you just trolling, or can you come up with some way to relate that to the article?

    Funny, though.

    --

  • After trying to get JBuilder working under linux, I'd really rather not have inprise's lack of committment to ease of use polluting the mac platform.
  • How did Mac developers survive SO LONG without Borland. THANK GOD were finally getting something useful.
  • Netscape for Windows doesn't look like Motif, but it has the same design constraints, particularly its inflexible toolbar. Of course, one could argue that if the IE toolbar was truly flexible, you'd be able to place it in any corner (or even just the bottom, like Opera) of the screen, just like Office toolbars, but Netscape has always been one worse than what M$ offered in that department...
  • I was at JavaONE and I listed to Steve Jobs pledge (yet again) his "support" and "committment" to making Java awesome on the mac. i'll believe it when i see it. Apple has *never* delievered on this and never will.

    It's substanially more practical to make Java "awesome" on Mac OS X (BSD/Unix/Mach) then it is on Mac OS "classic." Making Java work well on the Mac so far has basically been restricted by the OS itself, rather Apple's ability to write a good VM. Mac OS X's infrastructure is superior in every way. Remember, starting in 1997, Apple's core engineering was completely revamped after the NeXT engineers were brought in. Since that time, there have been two primary tasks for Avie Tevanian's software team:

    1) Fix Mac OS 8/9 as a stopgap
    2) Launch Mac OS X

    I would also add that some miraculous feats have been performed to accomplish #1.

    Java is a major part of Mac OS X as a whole. Some of the included apps, for example, are written in Java. WebObjects will soon be all Java, and Cocoa (Apple's recommended API set for new, non-ported applications) largerly revolves around the Java language.

    - Scott

    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • Okay, bad choice of words, accepted. But you knew what I was getting at. Someone made a comment that Apple was "better" because it made more than Dell/Gateway etc. Having control over the marketspace of your product makes that rather easier, don't you think?

  • Look, it's a MAC (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ok guys, I think this is a poor move by Inprise. I was at JavaONE and I listed to Steve Jobs pledge (yet again) his "support" and "committment" to making Java awesome on the mac. i'll believe it when i see it. Apple has *never* delievered on this and never will. (Jobs' committment wasn't the first time -- he's done this before and Apple has failed to come through).
  • I only ever used the bug ridden version 1.0 of JBuilder (and was sorely disapointed) but I seem to recall that felt like it itself was written in Java.

    Since this is inkeeping with borlands "We wrote Turbo pascal in turbo pascal & delphi in delphi" philsophy it makes me wonder just what's groundbreaking about supporting MacOSX.

    Now when they can produce a version of Delphi (I love that environment/language) that will compile for Win32, Linux & OsX from a single source... then i will be impressed :)
  • As far as JBuilder goes, putting it on even more platforms should only increase it's quality. The thing's almost entirely written in good 'ole pure and portable Java (see their great exposed API here [borland.com] -writing JBuilder plugins is actively encouraged). When you put a program like that on multiple platforms, you're testing (and, yes, milking) the same code over and over again. The platform hooks take a little effort sure, but it's definitely a win-win for borland- more revenue from multiple platforms coming in to reinvest on their single well-tested codebase.

    Incidentally, Borland has done the Java community and themselves a massive favour by making JBuilder Foundation [borland.com] free (as in beer). It's a brilliant fully featured product- highly recommended!

    Roberto (Java fanatic, in case you hadn't guessed)

  • 4. If you download code for the mac it's almost always in an .mcp format. Heck, even Apple does this... not a great vote of confidence for MPW. Mind you, with java it's not such a big deal, but it's helped ingrain CW into the Mac psyche.

    This really comes from the time of the introduction of the PPC - IIRC, there were no Mac compilers, other than Metrowerks' CodeWarrior, that were capable of compiling PPC code properly.
  • i remember delphi being quite big back in 95-96. dont know now. havent been using windows for 20 months now :)
  • They're also releasing, near the end of the year, a Linux version of Delphi, codenamed Kylix.
  • >..but, if Borland/Inprise is spending all their time and energy producing making the same product cross-platform, is this going to have an effect on the quality of their software.

    At least when it comes to JBuilder this is not much of an issue, since JBuilder 3.5 is a 100% Java application.

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