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Sorry for the delay, very busy lately. In case you're still there and interested in the answers: So .net was a deliberate ruse to trick Borland into delivering

by narag 4y ago

Sorry for the delay, very busy lately. In case you're still there and interested in the answers: So .net was a deliberate ruse to trick Borland into delivering a sub-par product? Not exactly, they wanted to create a walled garden, more similar to an app store. Drivers and some specialized programs that require high performance would still need to be native. But most everything else they wanted inside .NET ecosystem. That would eliminate any competitive advantage that Delphi had. Given the the dominace of Windows was because of the available software (and Microsofts dedication to backwards combatibility was legendary) I dont see why anybody would belive that. And yet in the Borland forums at the time there was a very vocal faction, including many of the official evangelists, that bought it. Borland was caught in a trap that Joel Spolsky described perfectly: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/ Microsoft offered access to docs. The bait. Also the price structure of Borland had gone horribly bad. The insisted in selling to the enterprise market because, they said, there's no money in reasonably priced dev tools. But that was just not true. JetBrains filled that gap. I believe Delphi still exists but it costs ten grands or something like that. Edit: another couple of factors why the wanted everything in .net were security (native is uncontrolable) and possibility of instantly disassembly the applications of any potential competitor. Yes, I know it sounds paranoid, but...

bazoom42 4y ago
> they wanted to create a walled garden, more similar to an app store Clearly this didnt happen - you can still run native executables on Windows, here 25 years later. Indeed this is why Windows was and remains popular - the amount of software you can run on it, including decades old native binaries. .net was a reaction against Java which was considered an existential threat to Microsoft because it promised platform-indepentent software. (Turned out it was the web and javascript MS should have been worried about, but they realized that to late.) Delphi was never a threat to Microsoft. Microsoft was just happy when people developed windows native software. Selling windows was strategically much more important than selling dev tools, so they probably wanted delphi to be succesful. Java and the web is what killed Borland.
- narag 4y ago
  Clearly this didnt happen... No, there's a Windows app store that nobody wants to use, obviously. Delphi was never a threat to Microsoft. Microsoft clearly saw Delphi as a threat: they proceeded to hire as much talent from Borland as they could and only relented because the suit. Java and the web is what killed Borland. That's difficult to believe. There are other companies that succeeded selling dev tools that didn't come close to Delphi. They just shot themselves in their foot.

by narag 4y ago

bazoom42 4y ago

> they wanted to create a walled garden, more similar to an app store Clearly this didnt happen - you can still run native executables on Windows, here 25 years later. Indeed this is why Windows was and remains popular - the amount of software you can run on it, including decades old native binaries. .net was a reaction against Java which was considered an existential threat to Microsoft because it promised platform-indepentent software. (Turned out it was the web and javascript MS should have been worried about, but they realized that to late.) Delphi was never a threat to Microsoft. Microsoft was just happy when people developed windows native software. Selling windows was strategically much more important than selling dev tools, so they probably wanted delphi to be succesful. Java and the web is what killed Borland.

narag 4y ago
Clearly this didnt happen... No, there's a Windows app store that nobody wants to use, obviously. Delphi was never a threat to Microsoft. Microsoft clearly saw Delphi as a threat: they proceeded to hire as much talent from Borland as they could and only relented because the suit. Java and the web is what killed Borland. That's difficult to believe. There are other companies that succeeded selling dev tools that didn't come close to Delphi. They just shot themselves in their foot.