Re: Microsoft Introduces New Command-Line Text Editor

On Wed, 21 May 2025 17:50:11 -0400, Joel wrote:

rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

On Wed, 21 May 2025 11:47:16 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
>

Long ago, Borland editors used the WordStar keyboard set. I loved it.
I don't know if the current Borland IDEs still use it.

>
I liked the Borland C++ IDE and OWL better than MFC but the gorilla won.
iirc you could select the Brief bindings on the editor but it wasn't the
full Brief editor. I'd used Wordstar on CP/M so I stayed with those.

 
 
The Borland C++ 5.x I had back in the day was great software, I never
got into GUI-app development with it, but it was great to have, to be
able to do college homework and experiment with coding.  In fact, in
those days it was non-trivial to copy an optical disk, so there wasn't
any kind of copy protection on it, not even a check for the prior
version in the upgrade edition either (I'd initially bought 4.x but
bought the 5.x upgrade after upgrading Windows itself from 3.x to 95),
so when Borland mailed me a new CD-ROM of 5.x for a minor update, I gave
the original disk to a friend from college, he could use the IDE/
compiler and online documentation without spending a dime.  Such a
different era.

Borland used the 'like a book' metaphor. You bought it, you can give it to
a friend or whatever. Lotus v. Borland, although the Supremes sort of
sleazed out of a decision, helped clarify APIs and UIs. You might be able
to copyright an icon, but you can't copyright a button that says 'Quit'.

Ever use Sidekick? That was another very popular Borland product. They
were different in an era when the box the software came in included a
parallel port dongle.

They were never the same after they bought Ashton-Tate. Microsoft bought
Fox, which really was a dBASE III clone, spruced it up with a GUI, and
created FoxPro, plus they had the homegrown Access. dBASE IV was
stillborn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg

You never hear him mentioned in the big name battles but his fingerprints
are all over a lot of things. I still have the CDs for Visual J++. I liked
it but Sun's lawsuit ended it. Hejlsberg moved on to C# which is sort of
Java like it should have been done. Sun might have done the world a favor.