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 First Look
Borland’s C# Builder Enterprise Edition 1.0
(Issue 086, September 15, 2003)
By Larry O'Brien
Borland Software Corp.’s C# Builder Enterprise Edition is a sharp disappointment and is unlikely to win heads-up competition with Microsoft’s Visual Studio .NET 2003 in any buying scenario. click for full story
Xcode: Apple’s Answer to Visual Studio
(Issue 085, September 1, 2003)
By Andrew Binstock
Since its earliest days, Apple Computer Inc. has had a relationship with developers marked by cycles of great enthusiasm interspersed with periods of mutual indifference. In the early days, Apple provided scads of info about toolboxes and A-line traps to members of its developer networks. This program, which was the antecedent to Microsoft’s MSDN and IBM’s developerWorks, fizzled out in the Sculley era. Until recently, developers were not made to feel quite as welcome as they were in those early, exciting days. But now, Apple is wooing developers in compelling ways as if it were trying to make up for the lost time. click for full story
Fiorano’s Tifosi
(Issue 076, May 1, 2003)
By Andrew Binstock
Vendors of Java Message Service (JMS) middleware, who once used to battle each other with great ferocity, have become a rather docile group of late, principally because JMS has become commoditized. As a result, the vendors compete on the basis of add-on functionality. For example, Sonic is pursuing Web services and EAI, while SpiritSoft continues its focus on pure messaging technology, and Talarian was swallowed up by TIBCO. click for full story
Performant’s OptiBench
(Issue 075, April 1, 2003)
By Andrew Binstock
There is little doubt that a key gating factor for the development of enterprise-scale distributed applications is the lack of high-end tools. I, for one, have previously discussed my amazement that reliable apps can be written at all when debugging can be so frightfully challenging—a central difficulty of which is purely replicating bugs. click for full story
Xtreme Simplicity’s C# Refactory and JetBrains’ IntelliJ IDEA
(Issue 072, February 15, 2003)
By Larry O'Brien
If there is any programmer who doubts that naming is vital to thought, look no further than Martin Fowler’s 1999 landmark book “Refactoring.” There had been virtually no prior discussion in print of the techniques by which pieces of functioning code are incrementally changed and, one hopes, improved. In a profession where “iterative and incremental” is one of a very small number of universally accepted verities, it seems incredible in retrospect that there had been a vast silence about the specific techniques of manipulating existing code. click for full story
Microsoft Tablet PC and SDK
(Issue 068, December 15, 2002)
By Larry O'Brien
First comes a full-fledged geek-out. There are people who react viscerally to sports cars, to military equipment and, I suppose, to quilts. A Tablet PC, though, is an arrow aimed straight for the heart of those for whom computing is a central preoccupation of their lives. Until we get holodecks, or at least that gesture interface shown in “Minority Report,” a flat and light device with wireless network access and a form-factor approximating a pad of paper will be the most desirable computer available. click for full story
M7 Application Assembly Platform and Studio
(Issue 067, December 1, 2002)
By Andrew Binstock
Many sites today recognize that J2EE is a vast sprawling solution, whose mastery is accomplished by only a few developers of true guru standing. J2EE comprises a variety of technologies, whose only common link is their Java implementation. Once understood, these pieces require an additional level of skill to integrate effectively, so that they can form a properly performing solution. click for full story
Kylix 3
(Issue 065, November 1, 2002)
By Larry O'Brien
Corporate teams developing high-performance or embedded applications for Linux should be thrilled to hear that Borland Software Corp. has added C++ to its latest release of the Kylix integrated development environment. Kylix 3, which largely shares the look-and-feel of Borland’s other development environments, such as JBuilder and C++ Builder for Windows, comes in three configurations, but the $1,999 Enterprise edition has a compelling story for those whose livelihood involves form-based user interfaces, database interaction and Web services. click for full story
WebLogic Workshop
(Issue 063, October 1, 2002)
By Andrew Binstock
BEA Systems Inc…the company that was born in a Tuxedo and raised on a cup of Java, is now looking to remake itself with Web services. The San Jose firm is finding that the market for Java application servers, which it has dominated for several years, is becoming too narrow and commoditized a niche for sustained growth. click for full story
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