Category: Software & Technology

Borland brings back Turbo development tools

Good news on the Delphi front: Borland brings back its Turbo Tools.

I’ve been a loyal Borland tools user for as long as I have been seriously programming. I cut my teeth on Turbo Pascal. I taught myself C with Borland C++ when it was still a DOS-only tool. I programmed SwordSearcher 2.0 with Borland C++ 4, SwordSearcher 3.0 with Borland C++ 5, and SwordSearcher 4 with Delphi 5, 6, 7, 2005, and 2006.

Borland’s early strength, in my view, was its affordable and powerful tools targeted at students and independent developers. They’ve been spending a lot of time, research, and money developing for the “enterprise sector,” which I know has a lot of money in it –- but they’ve lost sight the early developer who wants a platform to code for fun, or as a hobby, or as an independent software vendor. As a result of this, they’ve lost a lot of “new blood” with people going for the free (but not very good) tools, or for the inexpensive Microsoft “lite” platforms.

This is just my opinion, of course. I’ve not looked to research to back up this particular gut estimation of the current state of development tools. But it is where I bring home my bacon, so I think I have some grasp of the situation.

Finally, Borland (or, more likely, the Developer Tools guys at Borland) is doing something to make an effort to get new developers into their camp. Good! I’ve been using Delphi for years. Delphi Developer Studio 2006 is the best Win32 development platform available, period. I want Delphi to prosper so that I can continue using it!

Hopefully this will make Borland’s divestiture of the Devloper Tools group more successful. My read on the DevCo guys (as they are calling themselves) is that they can’t wait to get out from under Borland, which is more focused on management buzzword-ware “application lifecycle management” stuff –- whatever -– than it is on making good development tools. I am looking forward to an unhindered Delphi development team churning out the best IDE for Windows programmers for years to come.

Business reading: Google and Commodore

Current business reading: The Google Story. I’m about a third of the way through this book about the guys who started Google and the empire they created. It’s an interesting read, but its clear the author is in awe of the folks behind Google. If you can get past that, though, there is something here for you, assuming you like to read about how successful businesses started (as I do).

A more interesting (in my opinion) business book that I recently read is On The Edge: the Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore. If you have a fondness for the early Commodore machines, as I do for the Commodore 64, you’ll enjoy this book packed with insider information about how Commodore became the most powerful and successful personal computer company in history, only to lose it all in the end.

SwordSearcher 4.8; Daily Bible and Prayer 2.0; And my other programs

A few announcements about my software:

SwordSearcher Bible Software 4.8 has been released. See what’s new.

Daily Bible and Prayer 2.0 has been released. See what’s new.

Adjunct Blaster and Folder Jockey are now freeware programs. I’ve made them freeware because I’ve decided not to develop these further and they have never been an important part of my software business. I still use Folder Jockey every day, so you should check it out: it just might save you some tedium.

Flash-drive adventures

Being able to carry around two gigabytes of data on your key ring is handy.

I recently got a USB flash drive: a JetFlash 110. This is a great piece of hardware. It’s very fast compared to most flash drives I considered. It’s built well and I have no worries carrying it around in my pocket on my key ring. Windows XP recognizes it as a removable storage device when you plug it into a USB port — no drivers needed.

First thing to do when you get one of these: set up an encryption system. You want to be able to carry around the drive with your important data on it, but don’t want to worry about what will happen if you lose it or have it stolen.

The JetFlash 110 comes with security software, but it is not secure. True, it does password-protect data on the drive, but: it also includes a “recovery” utility that you can use to get your data back if you forget your password. Sounds convenient, but what that really means is the data is not secure. If you can recover your data without a password, so can someone else. So don’t bother with the included security software.

I erased the flash drive and then installed TrueCrypt on the drive in traveler mode. TrueCrypt is serious encryption for Windows. It allows you to format partitions of hard drives, or create encrypted files that act like hard drives. And they are actually secure. If you lose your password for a TrueCrypt volume, your data is gone. Just as it should be. Traveler mode allows you to mount your encrypted volume as a hard drive on any Windows XP system without installing drivers or other software. Handy!

I’ve been a user of The Bat for email for quite some time now, and it just keeps getting better. RitLabs has released a special “traveler” version of The Bat called Voyager that lets you take your email with you wherever you go on a flash drive. Works like a charm, and it is fairly simple to synchronize your Voyager database with your desktop The Bat database.

With strong security like what TrueCrypt offers, I can safely carry vital data like passwords, email, source code, etc and not worry about losing it.