Category: Borland

No video for CodeRage 2007, this weeks live BorCon? The Fix!

Are you enjoying BorCon 2007?  Well, CodeRage 2007 is more PC I guess… 

Well, cool!  You’re not alone!  In fact SOOOOO many people joined, it crashed the video (MMS) feed.  So they had to turn it off.   It is back on Tuesday morning, but already showing signs of failing.  So you might want to just stick with Interwise.

 Here’s what to do to fix that problem…

(BTW if you haven’t join yet, what are you waiting for?  register_now for this virtual conference and join the fun!)

1. Go to http://www.interwise.com/ and download their “Participant Application” client.  If you’re running windows, just click here: aa .

2.  Choose the stream that is appropriate for the session you want to attend.  (The sessions on the left are in stream 1. Right=Stream 2)
Stream 1 – http://borland.interwise.com/borland/iSeminar/PJ8838

Stream 2 – http://borland.interwise.com/borland/iSeminar/JR8382

3.  Join the normal session from the session list.

4. Separate the video

5. Close that tab/window.

6. Click “I’m listening” to get a chance to get the prize for the session.

You now have the visual display AND a chat window without echoing sound.

Delphi for PHP Article 1: A Video Walk Through

Rumors have been flying around for the last month about Borland producing a PHP product. “PHP? Are they nuts?” some said, “Concentrate on what you know! Are you trying to create another Kylix just to have it fade away to nothing?” Needless to say, I was a bit more optimistic than that… I mean come on! RAD PHP development? How cool would that be? PHP has the EXACT same feel as Pacal did back in the late 80s. It’s a baby language just starting to grow up. Even the people in it have the same core “I’m gonna help you because I know later you will help me” attitude that Pascal and Delphi always had.

Plus, since the restructuring of Borland has sifted the chaff from the wheat, CodeGear seems have its act together and the people of CodeGear are really the cream of the crop. (Yes, I know. I just said that they are Cream of Wheat, let it go… just let it go.)

Well, dreams came true when I was invited to be a CodeGear field tester. And last Thursday morning, with the verbiage hot off the presses from the Borland legal department, I was granted a limited exemption from my NDA (Non-disclosure agreement) to pitch a possible Google Summer of Code 2007 joint D4p/WordPress project to Automattic (I’ll let you know later how that turns out…). That NDA exemption also gave me permission to post articles and write reviews of the product. So here we are today!

So, now I can show you tell you all about the cool stuff I’ve been doing and show you movies I’ve made of the product in action.

In my usual fashion, I’ve written a gargantuan article. Instead of posting huge thing, I’m splitting the sections off into separate articles. Today, I just want to give you walk through of the product and show you some of the stuff that makes it unique.

This video uses a pre-release version of Delphi for PHP. Components, look and feel, and features may change before release. THIS VIDEO HAS SOUND.
‘

If you have any problems with the video playback on any browser please let me know and I will try to get it to work.

Impressions of the Developer Studio 2006 World Tour

1. Abstract

The Borland Developer Tools Group is doing a world wide tour to demonstrate the usability and productivity of the Borland Developer Studio. They are also trying to send a clear message to their devoted developers that the Delphi divestment doesn’t denote Dooms Day.

2. Overview

I attended the May 31, 2006, Columbus, Ohio event hosted by Anders Ohlsson. Anders’ official title, with Borland, is Staff Engineer. But it’s worse than that. He’s really in marketing.
Despite that, he’s congenial, intelligent and knows his stuff fairly well.

During the presentation he fielded many questions from the the audience. One thing that surpised me was the standard response to questions that he could not answer. He didn’t say contact support or even look at the FAQ on our website. Consistenly he said “Go to the blogs.”. I even doodled that in big bold letters across the top of one of my pages of notes. “Go to the Blogs” was the response to questions ranging from specific code upgrade issues to queries like “What’s the latest dirt on Dev Co?”.

BTW, the most important place to look for answers is the blog of Borland’s Chief scientist Allen Bauer, “The Oracle of Delphi”. He’s who has most freely discussed matters regarding the spin off of the developer tools. NOTE: Anders’ wording and hesitation in that sentence led me to believe Bauer had been a bit more liberal with discussing the matter than he had been been authorized to OR perhaps that the tighter leash on everyone else was chaffing a bit.. It was clear that there was definitely a list of items that could (and likewise could not) be discussed by Borland employees.

Continue reading Impressions of the Developer Studio 2006 World Tour

Brian Layman on .Net Programming

I’ve used this twice now.  So I’ll add it here.

Some PHP zealot stated that because PHP could be used in conjunction with AJAX, .NET was dead.  I should have just let him go, but he was being so arrogant that he could only be some 14 year old sitting in his parents house spouting “wisdom” for the masses despite his bragging of being a VB programmer with 20 years of experience.  And frankly I don’t see much difference between a 14 year old living with his parents and a Visual Basic programmer with 20 years of experience (so sorry ;p).

So, here is my response and more importantly my explanation of what .NET programming is and isn’t:

“[..] Microsoft is spouting that Win32 is dead not that .NET is dead.  While I agree that is not correct (Win32 is far from dead), it is not because .NET is going to leave the scene any time in the next 20 years.  .NET
programming is the only manner of programming MS’s new compilers allow. Really .NET isn’t a language at all.  It is a standard that can be used by any programming language to get your code into a third neutral language that will run on any platform. Basically you don’t compile into machine code anymore.  That way all of the tricks the hacker uses are eliminated.  No more reading areas of memory that don’t belong to you.  No more expanding your strings with binary code to put stuff where it doesn’t belong.  [No more grabbing initialized memory and accidentally getting the contents of an email that was just sent out.] The second level of compiling ensures none of that exists in the new final machine code.  Then the OS (Vienna?) will not allow anything that is not .NET compliant to run.

So, you write something in C or Delphi in a way that conforms to the .Net standard.  That compiler translates your code into a Common Intermediate Language that will be compiled again in a by a Common Language Runtime (CLR) to run on specific platforms (OSs).  MS’s .Net framework, the only.net “platform” that we have right now, is just the transition path to allow us to start writing applications now that will compatible with their future OS’s.  It’s a pretty smart plan really.  We are a long time away from having a OS that only supports programs written under the .NET specs (2009?), but MS is starting to make those programs the only type that can be written.”  

[continuing] 

And in that fashion Microsoft ensures their new OS standard will be adopted even when drop backwards compatibility to Windows Server 200x and Windows Vista and Windows XP by saying that their OS will  no longer allow 16 bit and Win32 bit programs to run.  The fact that no major programming languages, other than Delphi 2006, support Win32 programming ensures that by 2009 most apps that are less than 5 years old will be .NET and run on MS Vienna without a problem and MS can say that they have achieved 95% compatibility.  They have found a way achieve forward compatibility with an operating system half a decade into the future.

I have to say that is somewhat impressive. They definately do some things right.  Just don’t get me started about feature level de-activation in Windows Vista.

There are problems there. For instance, I changed some hardware in my computer. Outlook deactivated itself and required I put in the original disk to get it to work. Fine. I did that and ti was working again. But just now it deactivated itself again, because it suddenly decided I must be a thief. I’m connecting via Remote Desktop and some bug must have led it to determine that my hardware had changed again.  I AM VPNING IN HOW CAN I INSERT THE CD???? IT IS ON MY DESK AT HOME!!!! AAAGGHHH! I guess you take the good with the bad…

*UPDATE: AND NOW IT’S HAPPENED TWICE!!! but that’s for another post….

Borland Dies.

By now every Delphi programmer knows about this.  But for all others, here you go:

Borland has release the first version of Delphi, since Delphi 5 in 1999ish, that has been truely worth the upgrade price.  Delphi 2006 (D9) pretty much guarantees the success of the company by being the ONLY compiler fill a niche (Win32 development) that MS’s move to dot .net created.  Only ONE of the new MS compilers will allow you to write a Win32 bit app (VC++ still allows it but VB, VC#, VJ# etc do not  Thanks Liviu! ) Delphi is IT for the next 7-10 years while Win32 apps will still be allowed (basically for the life span of Windows XP and Vista).

Having such a high quality tool that practically guaranteed sales in a totally open vertical market, left Borland’s newest poker-playing-turn-around-guy, Tod Nielsen – the newest in a string of CEOs dedicated to the destruction of Borland – no choice but to kill the company by dropping all code development tools 100 days after he took the job.

“We’re still all about development, but less about the creation of code,” Nielsen said.  – HUH??????

The interesting thing is that the Delphi community user base is SO frustrated with the management decisions of the last 7 years that they have thrown up their arms and said “Fine. Do it. And good riddance.” 

 Read the details:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0%2C1895%2C1922016%2C00.asp

 

Addendum – I just found out that in the fall of 2005 a Borland stock holder (the largest?) had offered Borland 125 million for their language suites.  Borland turned him down out of hand.  Now a few months later, they’ve begun to think “hmmm, that was a lot of green!  Let’s do it!”  Of course now that they are the ones wanting to make the deal, not the buyers, they’ll be lucky to get 2/3 the original offer.   Which I should be happy with I guess.  It means the people buying the IDE products will have all the more money to invest in them… 

Oh and if you are a news group reader, David “I” has been out on the groups lately trying to restore confidence in the product.

I still can’t beleive they’ve done this after such a succesful production release. But I guess you always clean your car just before you sell it, too.