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Borland brings back Turbo development tools

Good news on the Delphi front: Borland brings back its Turbo Tools.

I’ve been a loyal Borland tools user for as long as I have been seriously programming. I cut my teeth on Turbo Pascal. I taught myself C with Borland C++ when it was still a DOS-only tool. I programmed SwordSearcher 2.0 with Borland C++ 4, SwordSearcher 3.0 with Borland C++ 5, and SwordSearcher 4 with Delphi 5, 6, 7, 2005, and 2006.

Borland’s early strength, in my view, was its affordable and powerful tools targeted at students and independent developers. They’ve been spending a lot of time, research, and money developing for the “enterprise sector,” which I know has a lot of money in it –- but they’ve lost sight the early developer who wants a platform to code for fun, or as a hobby, or as an independent software vendor. As a result of this, they’ve lost a lot of “new blood” with people going for the free (but not very good) tools, or for the inexpensive Microsoft “lite” platforms.

This is just my opinion, of course. I’ve not looked to research to back up this particular gut estimation of the current state of development tools. But it is where I bring home my bacon, so I think I have some grasp of the situation.

Finally, Borland (or, more likely, the Developer Tools guys at Borland) is doing something to make an effort to get new developers into their camp. Good! I’ve been using Delphi for years. Delphi Developer Studio 2006 is the best Win32 development platform available, period. I want Delphi to prosper so that I can continue using it!

Hopefully this will make Borland’s divestiture of the Devloper Tools group more successful. My read on the DevCo guys (as they are calling themselves) is that they can’t wait to get out from under Borland, which is more focused on management buzzword-ware “application lifecycle management” stuff –- whatever -– than it is on making good development tools. I am looking forward to an unhindered Delphi development team churning out the best IDE for Windows programmers for years to come.

Global Warming Already Happened

People sweltering from a heat wave in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. might find cold comfort in the fact that the temperatures of the past few days are not the hottest on record. That “honor” belongs to a summer 76 years ago — decades before the controversy over “man-made global warming” began.

I simply find it amazing that with something as unpredictable as the weather (we can hardly get an accurate five-day forecast!), people are convinced that human beings are having a measurable impact on it. If you can’t tell me how hot it’s going to be next week, how serious am I supposed to take you when you tell me that “it’ll be hot and it’s your fault!”

What’s in a hate crime?

Gunman Shoots 6 at Seattle Jewish Center

Authorities said a man walked into the Jewish agency on Friday and opened fire, killing one woman and injuring at least five others in what they call a hate crime. Naveed Afzal Haq, 30, was booked into the King County Jail for investigation of homicide and attempted homicide, police said.

“Hate crime?” Exactly what would have to be different for the press to call this what it is? This is terrorism.

Da Vinci Code pegs the silly needle

Someone said “Getting religion from the Da Vinci Code is like getting science from Star Trek.”

Frankly, this Da Vinci Code stuff is embarrassingly silly… a preposterous conspiracy-theory-fiction book that people have latched on to as “proof” that Jesus is not God.

It seems ridiculous to me that anyone should have to defend the Bible from a fictional story, but it is interesting to see just how many absurd ideas have been embraced as “true” by so many people. Check out The Da Vinci Code Myth.

If the Da Vinci Code bears any resemblance to actual history, then Disney’s National Treasure is incontrovertible proof that the founding fathers of the USA hide billions in treasure under the streets of Washington.

Business reading: Google and Commodore

Current business reading: The Google Story. I’m about a third of the way through this book about the guys who started Google and the empire they created. It’s an interesting read, but its clear the author is in awe of the folks behind Google. If you can get past that, though, there is something here for you, assuming you like to read about how successful businesses started (as I do).

A more interesting (in my opinion) business book that I recently read is On The Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore. If you have a fondness for the early Commodore machines, as I do for the Commodore 64, you’ll enjoy this book packed with insider information about how Commodore became the most powerful and successful personal computer company in history, only to lose it all in the end.