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Borland Announces the Return of the Turbo Products, with Video
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tue Aug 08, 2006 02:47 PM
from the save-us-turboman dept.
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
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What age group? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://twoturtlelovers.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday May 25, @03:01PM)
The adventures of TurboMan? Just to confirm, we are talking about college students, not elementary school, right?
Re:What age group? (Score:5, Funny)
Hardware requirements? (Score:5, Funny)
That's just wierd (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.davidrickard.net/)
I'll certainly be interested to look at these though. Free things are ALWAYS good
Re:That's just wierd (Score:5, Funny)
Did you live in Troy [wikipedia.org] in a previous life?
Re:That's just wierd (Score:5, Funny)
(http://robvincent.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 09, @01:55PM)
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)
With 80% more standards non-compliance.
TurboC (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.agileagenda.com/)
Re:TurboC (Score:5, Informative)
Coincidence? (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering that Visual Studio is a highly evolved (I know, this is ALWAYS open for debate on
Re:Coincidence? (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Visual Studio Express is free forever (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.ragingmime.com/)
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)
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.
Turbo C++ (Score:3, Insightful)
Why Switch To Borland's Turbo Line? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:download (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Sad, these are Borland's last ideas... (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
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?
This is only to bring up their stock price! (Score:5, Insightful)
"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!
Yawn... (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.ancar.org/)
What a gigantic fuck-up (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
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.
Never mind that shit!! (Score:4, Insightful)
The best programmers editor evar! Globsub in a column-marked block? No problemo!
Open source it!
New versus old. I stick with the proven old. (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://dinther.dnsalias.com/)
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
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.
A few kind suggestions: (Score:3, Interesting)
Turbo Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://picknit.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday July 29 2006, @03:58PM)
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.
Compete with M$ (Score:3, Informative)
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)
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.
Re:Delphi??? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.techtips.com.br/)
Anyway, Delphi is only half of the picture here. There's Turbo C++ and C# offerings along with the native Delphi and Delphi for
Basically, the explorer versions are advanced IDEs for these languages, free of change, allowing commercial development. There's your motivation.
Turbo Pascal was disruptive (Score:5, Insightful)
Turbo Pascal was a great because a) it was inexpensive compared to everyone else; and b) it compiled soooo much faster than everyone else. The development environment concept was pretty innovative too, and eliminated much of the command line funkiness. Funny, I didn't Turbo Pascal in the press release - Delphi, C++, C#. I guess you could call Delphi "object Pascal" if you wanted to.
However, this press release stinks of a marketing cash-grab where they try to make a quick buck by squeezing the legacy heritage of a well-known trademark. I just don't see that they're adding any value to the proposition. Some marketroid probably did the math based on "no new development NRE" and was brimming at the huge potential margins on such a re-release (i.e. Margin
Tell Blaise that I still have fond memories
motivation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Delphi has been my tool of choice for the last 11 years. It remains the
most productive development tool I have used.
Agile processes? Well, the build on a Delphi project is so quick, you
don't have time to fill your coffee cup, much less drink it. So build/test
cycles are fast.
The language is powerful, and a great foundation for those who choose to
move to C#. The learning curve on C#, coming from Delphi, is pretty shallow.
But please, stay with your g++, and those glacially slow builds. I don't
need more competition.