Archive for May 7th, 2008

Borland sells CodeGear

Published
by
Oliver
on 2008-05-07
. 1 Comment

Today the news of the purchase of CodeGear by Embarcadero Technologies transpired. I am wondering what this brings us (the developers), given the interesting past of Borland.

First it was “Borland” with products like “Borland Pascal” (and “Turbo Pascal”) and at the end of the 1990s it called itself suddenly “Inprise” and we could buy “Inprise Delphi” … wow. After a short interlude under this changed name, we landed back at “Borland” until the point when they “forked” and created a subsidiary responsible for the developer tools, called “CodeGear” and fully owned by them, after failing to sell the branch. Now Embarcadero Technologies was obviously willing to purchase this subsidiary and this will in my opinion be a defining moment for Delphi and C++ Builder.

It felt a bit like these tools all landed in an orphanage called “CodeGear”, rather than a subsidiary fully committed to the development of these formerly great products. I have bought BDS 2006 (which includes Delphi 2006 and C++ Builder 2006) in May 2006 and was very much disappointed. The product is creeping slow. I cannot override any of the prerequisites when installing it and I am even forced to install the .NET SDK 1.x, although I am not at all interested in any of the .NET “personalities” offered by BDS 2006. Hint, Visual Studio 2003 offers the ability to override the prerequisite requirements for those who are anyway not interested in the parts of the product suite that require those.

Now that they have released BDS 2007, and the future version - codenamed Tiburon - is on the doorstep, I have lost all my trust in that company and find the upgrade prices from the failed product BDS 2006 to the newer versions is ridiculous, given that I might just get another failed product. Borland/Inprise/Borland/CodeGear isn’t known to provide trial versions that allow you to actually try all aspects of their products. For example the command line compiler is known to be missing or crippled. So what am I supposed to do? Believe some of the pro-Delphi zealots once again to get disappointed once again?

Waiting for input …,

// Oliver

PS: I’ll certainly observe the developments in these products, but it’s getting a bit more scary at the moment, rather than exciting or at least reassuring.

Update: looking at this, “Commodore” seems to be the one I am waiting for, not Tiburon.

“Bankrott durch Scheidung”

Published
by
Oliver
on 2008-05-07
. 0 Comments

Das ZDF behandelt in der Sendung 37 Grad: Bankrott durch Scheidung vom 2008-05-06 ein interessantes Thema. Es geht darum, was nach einer Scheidung passiert und dabei wird auch etwas behandelt, daß ich immer als Ungerechtigkeit empfand: die geschiedene Frau bekommt Geld vom ehemaligen Ehemann - und nicht wenig. Nun ist es so, daß ich in der DDR aufgewachsen bin, wo es das Normalste von der Welt war, wenn eine Frau zusätzlich zur Familie auch noch einen Beruf hatte. Vielleicht bin ich dadurch sozusagen etwas “verzogen”.

Um keine Mißverständnisse aufkommen zu lassen: Unterhalt für die Kinder sollte immer fällig sein, keine Frage. Sogar soetwas wie einen zeitweiligen Unterhalt für eine zuvor nicht berufstätige Frau fände ich nicht per-se ungerecht. Was ich aber ungerecht finde ist, daß die Frau auf Kosten eines Menschen von dem sie sich getrennt hat, leben darf. Vom Staat wird das im Prinzip auch noch unterstützt. Bitter - besonders für den Mann.

// Oliver

PS: Ich kenne übrigens schon einige Frauen, die interessanterweise der gleichen Meinung sind, obwohl sie ja unter diesen Umständen profitieren würden.