Well, even considering the world outside of a PC and Windows was probably OS/2, which I know nothing about, or the incredibly fragmented Unix world (Linux was still a wannabe) with Motif/CDE/xlib, C++ without working compilers, an infinite number of #ifdefs, (Linux) threads implemented as a userspace hack, a.out binaries, primitive TCL and Perl as the high-productivity alternatives...
The lead architect of the VCL went-on to work for Microsoft on .Net and most of the venerable (and still working, if not actively maintained) Winforms API is really reminiscent of the VCL, albeit corrupted by the win32 API leaking through.
Maybe it is rose-tinted glasses, but I remember having a significantly more pleasant experience working wight the VCL (through C++ Builder) than with Winforms.
This is the one thing that I will not forgive MS for. They bought the lead guy from Borland rather than compete against the product. I guess it's all fair in business, but it was a gutless defense of VB - an admission, actually - that VB wasn't up to the competition.
The summary for me is that Delphi was more productive and way better designed than VB with the performance of C. I never understood why it didn't have a broader following. My guess is that developers enjoyed the challenge of C/C++, call it an aesthetic judgement.
Microsoft bought not only Anders but also about 30 other Borland developers over the course of several years. Borland sued, but eventually reached an out of court settlement.
I sometimes wonder what Delphi would look like today, had Anders not joined the MS fold.
Micrsoft did far nastier things to Borland. E.g. During the Windows 95 preview stage they added code to the app launcher that would detect binaries compiled with Borland products and generate bogus errors.
There's plenty not to forgive Microsoft for. It's just so much cuddlier mow that it's a little desperate.
Myself as well. I really really liked Borland products. I had an emotional attachment to them. I got Borland C/C++ (3?) as a Christmas present shrink-wrapped one year and I thought it was the best Christmas present ever. Lots of people learned C using K&R's book - I learned C/C++ from reading Borland's manuals.
Long story short, when MS turned the full weight of their organization on Borland and sunk them it opened my eyes to MS's corporate behaviour. That's how I learned that MS always played dirty. It set me out on the road to looking for alternatives to Windows. It's ultimately why I'm writing this in Firefox on Ubuntu.
From 1997: "Borland International and Microsoft have settled a Borland-launched lawsuit that started on May 7, 1997, in Santa Clara County, CA. In the suit Borland alleged that Microsoft had hired 34 Borland employees over the past 30 months in order to steal Borland trade secrets."
Yes, his leaving was bad for Delphi, though good for him financially. A pity. That's why it is a good thing that Free Pascal and Lazarus are there now.
I totally undestand Hejlsberg for doing that. If i were his wife, and he rejected the offer, I would be *.
But to make a managed language out of it. WTF??
He could have made a GUI for C++, just like VCL, and not as complex as MFC. But I guess It was not (entirely) his decision.
It was a time when MS was battling SUN for Java add-ons.
I think it was a wrong course, to make a managed language that runs just on one platform.
Java's (excuse) is a multi-platform one. But .NET (MONO disregarded here for it lags behind), to be managed, GC language, exclusive to one platform ?? I can't comprehend that.
MS missed a chance to attack the consumer market (like Apple does).
No B2C apps written in .NET, only for the enterprise. That's why developers like Apple, and pay the Apple taxes (expensive Macs).
No, I think Hejlsberg knew perfectly well that he shouldn't attempt to do "GUI for C++". Borland tried it. The end result was, and is, terrible, and the sheer awkwardness of C++Builder was not really a matter of design or implementation, but due to the nature of C++ itself.
Delphi worked because they could control the language and mould it to fit the requirements of the VCL and of the IDE. With C++Builder, they had to introduce special proprietary extensions to C++ (which may have been, like Qt, implemented using macros internally, I don't know) such as "__published" and "__closure". Another factor was that Delphi's fast one-pass compiler allowed incredibly fast GUI-development; the "modify, compile, run" cycle could take literally seconds. C++Builder's use of C++ meant this cycle slowed down tremendously, even with tricks such as pre-compiled headers. C++ had other problems. It just wasn't a good idea.
Hejlsberg's C#/.NET design was necessary, although I agree with your other assertions. As far as I know, .NET was never able to replicate Delphi's genius, and a one-platform, proprietary language was a bad idea even back then.
The VCL ... yes very well done. I wish Microsoft would make their C++ environment work like that. The beautiful & preformat applications we could made.
Auto completion of API function calls and well integrated help - Sublime Text level workflow. It was sweet. I could manage with their help pages and examples quite well.
I never liked C, because I already knew a few Turbo Pascal versions before getting to learn C.
So the language was always meh for me, but then Borland blew it up with their schizophrenics moves and allowed C and C++ usage to grow in the PC world.
Linux was much less widely used and less on the radar then, compared to nowadays. That may be why there was no Linux port of BP7. Also, Borland did a Linux port of Delphi - called Kylix - later, but it never got popular and was later stopped. IIRC, it was free or had a free trial, and I had tried it a little. I read on the net that Linux people preferred C/gcc and its toolchain ( me too :), that may be why Kylix didn't get popular.
The above link says that Embarcadero has Linux support (via cross-compiling for Linux, on Windows) on their roadmap. But who knows what will happen, there have been so many changes of direction ...
* An insanely fast compiler
* Statically linked binaries -- no DLL hell (still important for certain kinds of applications)
* A proper module system, no need for precompiled header nonsense
* A UI framework/designer as easy to use as WinForms, at a time when the alternatives were MFC or Win32
* An easy upgrade path to 32-bit Windows
As long as you were ignorant of the world outside of a PC and Windows, it was nirvana.