david@hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu (04/03/91)
In early March, I went to the ACM Computer Science Conference in San Antonio. There, I asked the people at the Borland exhibit about OS/2 support. The gentleman I spoke with said that Borland currently does NOT plan to write versions of their compilers (Pascal & C) for OS/2 and probably will NOT do so UNTIL and unless the demand for such becomes great enough. Thus, if you are like me and prefer Borland compilers over Microsoft, you will have to either wait a long time or raise a big ruckus before you'll get an OS/2 compiler out of Borland. -- David T. Chappell -- david@catt.ncsu.edu North Carolina State University -- Computer And Technologies Theme Program -----------------
GD.SAR@forsythe.stanford.edu (Sandy Rockowitz) (04/03/91)
In article <1991Apr3.035559.11344@ncsu.edu>, david@hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu writes: >In early March, I went to the ACM Computer Science Conference in San Antonio. >There, I asked the people at the Borland exhibit about OS/2 support. The >gentleman I spoke with said that Borland currently does NOT plan to write >versions of their compilers (Pascal & C) for OS/2 and probably will NOT do >so UNTIL and unless the demand for such becomes great enough. To reinforce what David says, I was at the Software Development '91 conference in Santa Clara last month, where Borland announced C++ 2.0. After a long and glitzy presentation, the first question from the audience was something like "This all looks wonderful. But tomorrow I go back to programming OS/2 and Presentation Manager. When will this be available for OS/2?" Phillipe Kahn gave a long response to this question. He said that they had no plans for an OS/2 version, and that no one should hold off on other purchases in hopes that Borland would produce an OS/2 version. The market clearly isn't interested in OS/2. Borland had been an early OS/2 supporter (e.g. Paradox) and had lost money on it, and Borland is not in the business of losing money. If the market changes, then they would reevaluate, but for the forseeable future they will not be producing OS/2 products. So there you have it, from the most authoritative source possible. More generally, the Software Development '91 conference was a depressing place for those of us who are partial to OS/2. Lots and lots of slick tools are being created to help produce Windows software. OS/2 was distinctly the poor stepchild. And whereas there was a strong Microsoft presence touting OS/2, and giving away beta versions of their latest Codeview for Windows and their Object Linking and Embedding facility, there was no IBM booth on the exhibit floor at all. On a slightly more hopeful note, I found a lot of people at the show, and that includes people in booths on the exhibit floor, who were less than thrilled that Windows is overshadowing OS/2. Software developers recognize the difference between a real operating system and a real time interrupt handler. But the market speaks, and those who develop software listen. Sandy Rockowitz gd.sar@forsythe.stanford.edu