🚀 go-pugleaf

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