5 ms·

Delphi was far superior than all other languages of the time, it had all the necessary bullet points to become what is Java now. Borland really failed on the m

Delphi was far superior than all other languages of the time, it had all the necessary bullet points to become what is Java now. Borland really failed on the marketing and sales side, while providing the best tech, they completely missed the importance of having a strong sales team capable of scaling the language inside corporates, which were the driving force back in the days. I have a lot of good memories of Borland Delphi 4.0 and 5.0 on Windows 95 and later 98/2000.

caspper69 2y ago
I was never a Borland guy because I didn’t know pascal or c++ when they were big. But I (believe) I’ve heard stories that Microsoft was especially aggressive about poaching their talent. Things like pulling up in a limo with not-insignificant amounts of actual cash to lure them away. At least I think it was Borland. All’s fair in love & war I suppose, but it does feel dirty, lol. Anyway, it’s hard to execute when your best and brightest keep jumping ship to the competition. Please let me know if it was not Borland, because this is a good anecdote.
- selectnull 2y ago
  It was Borland management's incompetence that sent all the best talent to Microsoft.
  - gramie 2y ago
    Well, the $1 million signing bonus they gave Anders (back in 1996 when that meant something, slightly over $2 million today) probably didn't hurt.
    - markus_zhang 2y ago
      If value by Seattle housing market, probably way more than 2 million. I'd assume people usually dump this kind of money in housing markets.
    - selectnull 2y ago
      He got a technical fellow title, the money, and the company that enabled him to make all the good things in the future. He would have never made any of that if he stayed with Borland.
      - CRConrad 2y ago
        > the company that enabled him [Anders Hejlsberg] to make all the good things in the future. Too bad, then, that he / they didn't.
praptak 2y ago
> had all the necessary bullet points to become what is Java now The language itself was hacked together in a haphazard way. It didn't even have a formal grammar which I found out because it stopped us from creating some pretty important tooling for it. Edit: I think there was a commercial company that offered a parser, which they created by tweaking a grammar until it got a high enough pass rate on megabytes of publicly available Delphi code.

caspper69 2y ago

I was never a Borland guy because I didn’t know pascal or c++ when they were big. But I (believe) I’ve heard stories that Microsoft was especially aggressive about poaching their talent. Things like pulling up in a limo with not-insignificant amounts of actual cash to lure them away. At least I think it was Borland. All’s fair in love & war I suppose, but it does feel dirty, lol. Anyway, it’s hard to execute when your best and brightest keep jumping ship to the competition. Please let me know if it was not Borland, because this is a good anecdote.

selectnull 2y ago
It was Borland management's incompetence that sent all the best talent to Microsoft.
- gramie 2y ago
  Well, the $1 million signing bonus they gave Anders (back in 1996 when that meant something, slightly over $2 million today) probably didn't hurt.
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    If value by Seattle housing market, probably way more than 2 million. I'd assume people usually dump this kind of money in housing markets.
  - selectnull 2y ago
    He got a technical fellow title, the money, and the company that enabled him to make all the good things in the future. He would have never made any of that if he stayed with Borland.
    - CRConrad 2y ago
      > the company that enabled him [Anders Hejlsberg] to make all the good things in the future. Too bad, then, that he / they didn't.

praptak 2y ago

> had all the necessary bullet points to become what is Java now The language itself was hacked together in a haphazard way. It didn't even have a formal grammar which I found out because it stopped us from creating some pretty important tooling for it. Edit: I think there was a commercial company that offered a parser, which they created by tweaking a grammar until it got a high enough pass rate on megabytes of publicly available Delphi code.