My first impressions on IE8 Beta (http://maurosjungle.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F3CEB0849B03B6CC!356.entry) still stand, but after using it for more than two months I do have some comments.

 

I am quite happy with IE8, especially because it Is stable, fast and does not have my #1 IE 7 annoyance. IE7 doesn’t allow you to open more than about 30 pages at the same time (YMMV, but 40 pages is really a dead end). This is the way I browse the Internet and my browser should be able to do support it, period. Actually when you open that many pages on IE7, you cannot open any new windows at all in any program, not even the system menu when you right click on something. IE7 is actually hogging some system wide limit (very strange, BTW).

 

That IE7 hogs so many system resources in a computer with 3 GB RAM is beyond inexcusable. That reminds me of Windows 3.0 times when there were some limits on the amount of stuff you could do because of the use of a single 64kb heap for some system data such as Windows management data. Windows 3.1 improved that by using different heaps for different kinds of data but Windows 95 with its true 32-bit architecture is supposed to have put those limits to rest.

 

IE8 is fast and compatible with most sites. It has an “Emulate IE7” button that supposedly emulates IE7 behavior. I usually leave this “Emulate IE7” turned on because without it some sites don’t display properly. Also, since it’s a global setting (why?) and you have to restart all copies of IE in order for this setting to “stick”, it’s simply too much trouble for me to do this all the time, especially with dozens of simultaneously open windows. I say “supposedly” emulates IE7 because Google Maps is unusable even with this setting on.

 

So except for this Google Maps issue (I then open Firefox), I like IE8 Beta better than IE7 retail.

As promised, the presentation and samples from my SharePoint sessions are now available. You can download them from DevTeach’s site at http://www.devteach.com.

Microsoft announced today that it will support ODF and PDF “out of the box” in the next Service Pack of Office 2007, which used OpenXML by default (http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/may08/05-21ExpandedFormatsPR.mspx).

 

Microsoft fought bitterly against IBM, Sun and Open Source supporters in the international standard bodies for OpenXML approval, which finally became an ISO standard a month ago. This comes as a surprise move and shows that Microsoft is putting its money when its mouth is. Microsoft always claimed that OpenXML was superior and that people must have options. Now it’s indeed relying in the superiority of OpenXML, since being shipped with the major productivity suite (Office itself) is no longer a barrier against ODF.

 

OpenXML has full compatibility with all the billions of Office documents out there. ODF is simpler but is less capable and isn’t fully compatible with Office documents. Maybe there’s even space for both formats – but I wouldn’t hold my breath: OpenXML is very capable and free; if I were to write software to create Office documents I would place my bets on OpenXML – there’s no downside.

This week I delivered three sessions at DevTeach in Toronto, Canada (http://www.devteach.com/). As promised, here is the slides and examples from the “Exceptions: The good, the Bad and the Ugly (NET374)” session: http://www.mas.com.br/blog/ExceptionsDevTeach.zip

 

This session consists of the rationale behind exception and clear guidance on how to code properly. There’s probably something there even for the people that didn’t attend my session.

 

I will post the SharePoint sessions as soon as I get back home and open the virtual machine.

 

You can read the full interview I did with Anders Hejlsberg mentioned at my presentation here: http://maurosjungle.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F3CEB0849B03B6CC!270.entry

The last remnants of Borland, the once proud supplier of development tools, is no more. The company that calls itself Borland today sold “CodeGear”, its division created to steward the “IDE tools”, for a mere US$23 million to Embarcadero Technologies (http://www.embarcadero.com/). Embarcadero is 60 million dollar/year private company that sells database tools. Borland shares dropped about 10% on the news.

 

See the news at http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9937966-7.html?tag=bl.

 

Borland started its life to sell Turbo Pascal, a product created by Anders Hejlsberg in Denmark in order to compete with the BASIC interpreters developed by Paul Allen and Bill Gates, founders of Microsoft. Turbo Pascal was the first compiler with an integrated editor; it is the grandfather of the IDEs we see today like Visual Studio and Eclipse. Borland then went on to develop “Turbo C”, a C-language based IDE and then the professional “Borland C++” that, at the dawn of Windows, outsold Microsoft’s own C/C++ product 2 to 1. Borland C++ 3.1 was a mature Windows-based IDE with debugger and profiler. Microsoft’s competing offer, C 6.0 and C/C++ 7.0 were old-style command line tools. C++ 7.0 was a total disgrace; it crashed compiling the simplest of programs. It was not until Visual C++ and the stagnation of Borland’s offer that Microsoft became a leader again in the compiler arena.

 

Microsoft came up with Visual Basic in the early 90s and Borland answered with Delphi, a Pascal-based RAD tool for Windows. Delphi was (and still is) hugely popular in Brazil and as far as I know in several European countries as well. Anders Hejlsberg was behind Delphi too. After Anders and many more people left Borland around 1997 the company never really came up with an innovative development tool, although there were many attempts, especially with JBuilder, its Java-based tool.

 

While the tools division always did well until late 90s, the rest of the company floundered. I heard in person from the mouth of Philippe Kahn, the company’s founder, that the acquisition of Ashton-Tate (the dBase company) in 1989 was a big mistake they never recovered from. Other big mistakes followed, like renaming the company to “Inprise” and later back to “Borland”, thanks to some incompetent people hired from Apple after Steve Jobs fired them when he got his old job back.

 

Yes, there’s a company that calls itself Borland but the only thing it has in common with the Borland of Turbo Pascal, Turbo C and Delphi fame is its name. Even its headquarters that used to be in Scotts Valley, California are now in Austin, Texas. Given its financial situation and the deep dive its stock took– now it’s worth 25% of what it did one year ago – even that may not last long.

 

Pretty much everybody that worked for the “old” Borland is now a Microsoft employee. Given the clear Delphi roots in the .NET Framework – Anders is the “father” of C#, I use to say that “Borland still lives…inside Microsoft”.

 

If you want to know more about Borland and the origins of Turbo Pascal, read this interview I did with Anders Hejlsberg in 2001: http://maurosjungle.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F3CEB0849B03B6CC!270.entry.