Borland to sell IDE division

So if you don't already know I am a software developer and use Borland Delphi as my tool of choice. As a matter of fact I have been using Delphi since it was in beta and codenamed "polaris".

Recent news out of Borland corporate is that they are looking to unload the IDE division and focus the company on the ALM tools that Borland has acquired over the past few years.

Of course most die hard Borland fans are up in arms about it. Complaints range from the obvious that Borland has never been the same since people like Anders Hejlsberg and Danny Thorpe left for greener pastures, or that with the company focusing on the ALM products acquired in the past few years the IDE division never stood a chance.

While we can debate the merits of these claims it won’t change the fact that Borland corporate sees more value in the ALM market then in the IDE market.

So instead let’s look to the future. What are the things that could happen? On one end of the extreme we have a situation where nobody wants the IDE division and it just dies taking twenty years of rock solid compiler and database technology the way of the dodo. On the other end of the extreme a company like Google or Novell could pick up the IDE division and put visionaries like Anders Hejlsberg back at the helm.

While I like the latter idea, I think we are most likely closer to the former. While Borland's IDE tools were once the envy of most development tool companies they have stagnated in the past few years.

To really make BDS worth anyone’s time and money there needs to be some changes in the direction of the product. Here are just some of my ideas for making BDS the undisputed choice for IDE's

First and foremost enough .NET. If I want to develop in .NET I can use VS and if I really want to do it in Pascal I can use Chrome for VS.

Update the VCL. One of the appeals to BDS is the rich set of classes that are provided, but with few exceptions there hasn't been much expansion or overhauling of the VCL for several revisions.

Make the Editor and the IDE in general faster. Since D7 the IDE has been getting slower and slower. 2006 puts a lot of speed back but until I hacked out the Together IDE, StarTeam, and CaliberRM the IDE was still slow. I will spend 80% to 90% of my time in the IDE writing code, and I want the IDE to be waiting on me not the other way around.

Implement a 64bit compiler. We all know where we are going. Many of us have 64bit CPU's, and there is no reason to think that number will get smaller. There should have been a 64bit version of the BDS 2 years ago, and we are still waiting.

Implement a compiler/linker with the ability to build application for several target platforms. (i.e. Win32, Win64, Linux) from one project. I should be able to open a Delphi or BCB project and select “Build for Win64” or “Build for Win32” or “Build for Linux”

Incorporate JBuilder into the BDS so there is only 1 IDE, and for that matter the editor could be smart enough to handle “script” languages allowing you to incorporate PHP, Python, or Ruby.

OK so some of these are far fetched, and many of you are wondering if I fell down and hit my head. Like I said these are just some ideas, and I am not the only source on many of them.

Bottom line is that the Borland IDE’s will not survive being just competitive. They are successful because a little while ago they were years ahead of the competition. Whomever buys the IDE division needs to leap the technology ahead and blow the doors off the current competition. Get back to the point where people came into demos of the products and were speechless. Where after five minutes the audience asks if there are seatbelts for the chairs.

Well that’s just my opinion. Here is to the future and to the hope that tomorrow will be a better day.

Michael Gallaher
Sacramento, CA