Yet another Borland strategy

Sigh, yet another strategy from Borland. This is just sad to watch. I remember working at Microsoft in the C++ product group and during our low point Borland was kicking us up one side of the street and down the other. Borland C++ was an obviously better product with a Windows hosted IDE while our C++ 7.0 used the DOS command line. At the same time, Delphi offered developers VB ease of use with a real programming language.

But I think this latest move reflects reality more than it changes it. The vast majority of Borland language customers jumped shipped years ago when Borland tried to rename itself Inprise and began a hopeless quest to be an Enterprise software vendor. Borland had no realistic hope of winning them back and this move reflects that recognition.

I wish Tod Nielsen the best. I knew him at Microsoft and worked with him during a brief stint in Developer Relations, but I don't think Borland is going to find competing with Microsoft and IBM in lifecycle tools any easier than it did with programming languages.