If you are the real man, buy a bunch of Borland's IDEs and give it to her tonight. But do it nicely. Surprise her. She comes back from work, and sees a  little table covered with a white cloth. Put a boring bottle of Champaign and  flowers right on top. After the regular kiss-and-love-you, slowly lift up the table cloth and show her the pile of boxes with the award-winning Borland Developer Studio (Delphi, C++Builder and C#Builder) and JBuilder. I promise, after the dinner you'll have the best sex ever.

But in the morning, Borland’s announcement about getting rid of their IDEs  will  live a bitter taste in your mouth. At least it did in mine. 

For me, Borland was always THE IDE firm. I remember Borland’s Turbo C++ compiler... Back in 1992 I’ve purchased an excellent book by Robert Lafore “Object-Oriented Programming in Turbo C++”. After reading this book and trying the IDE my life was changed. Borland was always ahead of all in the IDE space. Then Philip Khan left the company, the company remained afloat, but something has been lost forever. Now they are getting rid of all IDEs. I’m not a businessman, but something in this announcement is not right. If you do not need a product line, quietly find a buyer and make an announcement afterward. But just standing at the corner and screaming “Buy me, anyone…” sounds so cheap. Remember “Pretty Woman”? She got lucky. But will Borland find its Richard Gere? As  they put it in the movie, the last time it happened was the story of cindy-fng-rella. It may happen again… Anyway, I wish Borland the best with their upcoming Eclispe version of JBuilder called Peloton that should be previewed in the next EclipseCon show.

Another one bites the dust. Who’s left in the Non-free Java IDE Store? Just JetBrains' IDEA and IBM's RAD. Hang in there, guys…

posted Tuesday, 14 February 2006