It’s very difficult to make money in developer tools. Microsoft could easily squeeze Borland by simply making MSDN tools free. Borland tried to diversify with databases, word processors, and spreadsheets, but Microsoft countered with Office, trying them altogether, and it became the default in every single business. Borland had great technology and was super innovative and I used Turbo C++ and TASM for years. But in the end, they just couldn’t find a cash cow market to keep them afloat.
replyThe could have been the Jetbrains (before Jetbrains existed) and even bigger than Jetbrains.
replyJust offload themselves to JetBrains, and have Delphi opened.
replyI remember thinking back then that Jetbrains had their pricing right.
replyNot free but low enough so that invidual developers and companies wouldn't think twice about bying a license.
Borland/Inprise/Codegear/Embarcadero just priced themselves out of the market.
And yes, naming themselves inprise was peak 90's wallstreet cringe.
replyBorland decided that they should target management instead of the developers as their focal point of product development. They ignored the Web for Delphi and decided that web development front would be covered by JBuilder, a paid and slow evolving product that could not compete against the fast iterating and free Eclipse.
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