Well luckily for me I can do and say whatever I like about
programming and the companies involved because I don't have to depend on
either for my living. I program because I choose to, and I try to provide
some otherwise overly-expensive services to small businesses that cannot
afford to hire or contract traditionally. My situation is one of chance...I
didn't make a specific choice to be poor or unable to work in the given
marketplace, but I figure as long as I'm in this situation I might as well
keep learning whatever I can that holds interest to me and at the same time
pass whatever value that provides me back to others as well!
As such my appreciation AND understanding of the industry may be
quite a bit different from most everyone else's here, and I admit to not
being privy to much of what molds your, ( meaning all of you ), thinking on
these topics, but at the same time perhaps it gives me a rather special
perspective on these same things as well!
I see it all as very connected...I mean the programming industry at
large as geared toward the non-corporate arena, and not taking into account
those areas of technology and commerce that may overlap...with very precise
conditions of cause and effect starting back with the introduction of
intermediate languages and their compilers up to and including how they made
the personal desktop possible. To me it has been very unfortunate for the
entire world that this technology and the methods designed to make use of it
have been for all intents and purposes controlled by one marketing combine!
For some reason, which perhaps someone here can explain to me, the
traditional effect of such broadly useful invention which would normally be
it's expansion on all fronts and in all directions, by an ever-increasing
variety of merchants and entrepreneurs, has been curtailed and left
dominated by the all-powerful hand that first made it marketable! It was if
someone saw it coming and tied up all the loose strings before IBM sold DOS
down the proverbial river, making sure, as Bell telephone did so long ago,
only THEY would be assured control over every facet of this area of computer
technology and use! This has not happened in the world of mainframes and
supra-computing?! ( Probably because it's more closely controlled by the
government here, but I've heard some interesting things about this situation
in other places around the world! )
You mentioned Linux again, and I agree that had Borland been even a
little aggressive they would now have the capitol to hire the intelligencia
needed to create a one-for-all-all-for-one VCL that could cope with Win32,
Linux, Unix, Net, and what ever else Microsoft decided to throw at us, after
all there's nothing stupendously wonderful about Net...it's merely another
technical ploy designed to keep the power in place and make all the smaller
companies jump thru hoops spending their time and money on constant and
ever-lasting recovery instead of innovation! All this BS about garbage
collection is just that...BS! It's an extremely simple idea being thrown
into a machine that was never geared up for it in the first place. Start at
the beginning again and see what Windows can be replaced with...it's a
wide-open world and all it takes is a couple trillion in US dollars to break
the hold it has over our desktops...but even more importantly, our thinking!
But to answer your question, I believe that it has become more than
obvious that as soon as any tech company can get to a point where they may
be able to change Microsoft's hold on the status-quo they either buy the
offender or if not possible or there are simply too many holes in the dike,
they change the technology and force the catch-up game to start all over
again! Borland, like so many others decided to become a player in the game
rather than try and buck the tide with research and innovation. So would
you have if it came down to a choice of spending your time looking for and
satisfying investors or lying on the beach spending your bonus money!
I read a quote the other day by a guy who said we should all ignore
software because everybody has a copy of the same solution and so looks at
the problems software is meant to solve in the same way. If there's
anything worse than cookie-cutter solutions it's the cookie-cutter concepts
that prompt them!
from: Robert Meek at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
dba "Tangentals Design" home of "PoBoy"
freeware Windows apps and utilities
located at: www.TangentalsDesign.com
Proud to be a moderotor for the
"Delphi Programming Lists" at: elists.org
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Ralph D. Wilson II
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 10:27 PM
To: Delphi-Talk Discussion List
Subject: Re: Some thoughts...
Robert,
I am making a note of the book you mentioned and will be seeking it
out. I, too, have often read (or read portions of) books on design that
were somewhere between pompous diatribes and overly theoretical and
complicated proposals that made me immediately speculate on whether the
author had ever had a successful software project. If there is one out
there that actually approaches the process from the idea of "user oriented"
rather than "let's make the perfect design and the user will just have to
deal with it", I want to read it.
You sound like you also remember the days when Borland was all about "of
programmers, for programmers, by programmers" and making the best tools
rather than being driven by marketing deadlines. I have never understood
why Borland didn't do better marketing but I never expected them to accept
such poor marketing as they have had of late . . . and such poor management
as to chase the idiotic deadlines that marketing was giving them.
Just this morning, I over heard a discussion between two of my co-workers .
. . about moving from Delphi to C# using Visual Studio. Part of the reason
I accept the job that I am now at was that they were using D6 and doing
some interesting things. Now, I am facing the possibility ( more likely
"probability") that another Delphi shop is going to be assimilated. I keep
thinking about the days when Borland's compilers were making MS's look like
a VW Bug compared to a Corvette . . . and wondering what ever happened to
those guys who were doing that.
What I keep asking myself (because nobody _else_ seems to care) is, why
didn't Borland perfect Kylix? Think about it, would you rather switch to
Dot-Net or Linux?
As you said, Microsoft seems to have the feeling that it really doesn't
matter what the end users want because, since "Microsoft is the only game
in town", they'll take whatever they can get and they'll like it. The
media and corporate management (as well as a lot of developers) have bought
into that and now go wherever the MS wind blows. The only thing is, there
is an awful lot of "legacy code" out there that relies on the Non-Dot-Net
OS . . . is MS really going to try to force all that to be converted and,
perhaps more important, is Corporate America going to swallow that? I
remember being told that I might as well not learn COBOL because it was "a
dead language" that wouldn't be used for much more than a couple of more
years . . . and that was in 1969! ;-)
You know, I am actually beginning to look forward to getting out of the
profession in a few years . . .
Respectfully,
Ralph D. Wilson II Web
Site: <http:thewizardsguild.com>
Systems
Analyst Email:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
San Antonio, TX 78259 Alt Email:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
H: (210) 497-2643
M: (210) 387-7744
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic." A.C.Clark
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