

Embarcadero Bridges Gap From Desktop to Mobile - supports iOS in C++Builder XE5 - srisa
http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/embarcadero-bridges-gap-from-desktop-mobile-with-new-ios-support-cbuilder-xe5-1861218.htm

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networked
According Embarcadero's website Delphi XE5 offers all the same plus Android
support:
[http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi](http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi),
[http://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder](http://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder).
If they're targeting mobile developers I wonder why Embarcadero hasn't
released a cheap "indie" version of Delphi yet. Last I checked it had much
better compile times than C++Builder and the language itself could easily be
marketed as a "friendlier C++". Meanwhile, outside of some larger companies
where it's entrenched Delphi's popularity is waning.

Edit: Now that I've looked at their online store through a US proxy I see that
they have:
[https://store.embarcadero.com/542/catalog/product.s3703/lang...](https://store.embarcadero.com/542/catalog/product.s3703/language.en/currency.USD/).
Not that the conditions are very good:

> _If you’re an individual you may use the Starter Edition to create apps for
> your own use and apps that you can sell until your revenues reach $1,000 per
> year. If you’re a small company or organization without revenue (or up to
> $1,000 per year in revenue), you can also use the Starter Edition. Once your
> company 's total revenue reaches US $1,000, or your team expands to more
> than 5 developers, move up to the Professional edition with an unrestricted
> commercial license._

The upgrade from Starter to Professional costs $899.00.

~~~
pjmlp
I used to love Borland tools.

Having learned Turbo Pascal before C, I never liked C, given the capabilities
of Turbo Pascal.

Type safety, blazing compile times, modules, system level programming,
objects.

Management killed Borland products thanks to their continuous change of brand,
lack of investment on Kylix and Anders going to Microsoft.

Most customers became reluctant to keep investing on their tooling.

~~~
networked
What you're saying rings true to me. I also learned Borland/Turbo/Object
Pascal first (perhaps somewhat unusually, I went from Borland Pascal to C++ to
Delphi when learning to program as a kid). Although I can't say I never liked
C there are many things about Object Pascal I found superior that I miss in C,
especially the built-in string type (for those who haven't used it, in C-land
it can be compared to bstrings but it's handled completely transparently).

If you wanted to use Object Pascal today and not have to rely on Embarcadero
for the continued support of your tools you could use Free Pascal and Lazarus,
which are both free software (GPL-licensed). Unfortunately, there's bit of a
stigma against using any variant of Pascal these days (to which, no doubt, the
many crappy CRUD apps written in Delphi and Borland's management of their
product have both contributed), so it's not a good choice for new projects,
especially free and open source. I wonder if Nimrod could be the comeback of
type-safe compiled languages that don't target the JVM.

~~~
lobster_johnson
Nimrod does indeed look very much inspired by Object Pascal (it even uses the
classic Borland "T" and "P" prefixes for types and pointers, respectively,
something I honestly never liked).

Object Pascal was a fine language, but I don't see the point of using it
today, not without removing a lot of the historical Pascal warts (begin/end,
the weird semicolon rules, somewhat poor integration with C, etc.), and then
you pretty much end up with Java.

~~~
pjmlp
Actualy C# I would say. ;)

~~~
lobster_johnson
Indeed! C# seems like the bastard child of Java and Delphi.

To be honest, I don't think I could ever go back to a language where method
names started with an upper case letter. What were we thinking!

------
72deluxe
I used to use Borland's products in a job. They used C++ Builder 6 and
migrated their code to the later compiler, Codegear 2007 and it was truly dire
(6 was alright). It was exceptionally buggy, the linker continually crashed,
and the help system took 14 hours to install (not an exaggeration). The VCL
had difficulty with manifests and proper theming on XP and above I think
(particularly tab pages) and it desperately needed fixing / replacing. The
company tested the version after 2007 and it would compile illegal C++.

I think after they spent years developing C++ Architect and then chucking it
in the bin, many of the developers jumped ship and Borland was left with few
developers, a shell of its former self. They also had stupid products like
their PHP IDE (I wonder how many they actually sold???) and as far as I know
the company I used to work for is still making software using the creaking
aging VCL! A large code base to rewrite is no fun!

A shame for Borland (or whatever they are called these days) but I am not
inclined to buy this software.

------
japaget
Embarcadero C++Builder is the successor to Borland's Turbo C. It has changed
names several times, having been marketed under the brands Borland, Inprise,
CodeGear, and Embarcadero.

~~~
malkia
Makes me wonder if they should not bring the old Borland name (or even Turbo).
That'll resonate at least with a lot more older developers (that might be
managers now).

I stared with programming with TURBO.COM (Turbo Pascal 3.0) - it was 33kb DOS
executable and had built-in editor - fit on a diskette, and there was space
for other things.

I skipped version 4 (Turbo/Borland Pascal) and had most fun with 5.0 and 5.5,
then 6.0 was solid, and later it was the last time I've used Borland products
- the first Delphi and that was it.

Turbo Vision (Borland's GUI for Text Mode - e.g. DOS) was very advanced. I've
briefly tried OWL (C/C++ I think) - but had to move onto other things.

Then Delphi was very easy to build interfaces, and later when Microsoft
snatched Anders Hejlsberg it kind of resurfaced in Microsoft's products. For
example MFC's GUI editing was much worse (and still is) than whatever Delphi
had 15 or more years ago (my opinion, I know too many MFC fans out there, and
surely they still love it).

~~~
barrkel
The Borland name was bought by Microfocus after Borland sold the developer
tools division to Embarcadero.

------
tux10
The biggest issue C++Builder has for me is that it is pretty damn expensive
considering Xcode is included as part of OS X. The Professional version is
£850 and still requires the extra purchase of the Mobile Add-on pack which is
an extra £423! That makes the total cost £1273!! I would rather _pay less_ and
buy a Macbook Air which comes with Xcode.

~~~
pjmlp
If it is just you, it might be expensive, but it is pretty cheap for big
companies, when you compare it with other commercial frameworks or compilers.

~~~
tux10
Yeah I am talking about individuals. I guess I am not their target customer
though. Obviously to big companies a few thousand is nothing (especially when
you look at >$10k for MSDN Ultimate) but Embarcadero have zero products aimed
towards the individual developer (not even the Starter Edition is worth it as
it is so limited for the price).

~~~
pjmlp
> Embarcadero have zero products aimed towards the individual developer

I think that is a sign of what the company has become, after being about to
close so many times.

I bet it lives mostly from enterprise legacy contracts nowadays.

~~~
tux10
Yeah I can't remember the last place I saw running any Borland/Embarcadero
software with the exception of some _really_ old stuff still compiled with
C++Builder6. That place was also running Visual Studio 6 for some stuff too :)
Ahh the memories.

~~~
onezeno
I work in C++Builder 6 still (small company). I'm trying to get things ported
to Qt.

~~~
tux10
What OS are you running it on out of interest? Does it still run on modern
platforms?

~~~
onezeno
It runs on Windows 7.

------
cmollis
here's what most cross-platform library vendors never get: it's actually
easier, and ultimately faster, to learn each environment's native API, then
learn one cross-platform API and all of the idiosyncrasies on each platform it
supports. Inevitably, there will be some aspect of the native platform that
doesn't work correctly within the x-platform sdk and then you have to hack
around it.

~~~
pjmlp
The first time I got to learn that was when I had to maintain a server
application across the commercial UNIXes of the 90's.

POSIX was not as portable as they advertised.

