Using Embarcadero Borland

Question

As I'm more and more dissapointed with VS 2010 I'm trying to find some alternative and I was looking at Embarcadero's new edition of C++ env.
Is there any point of learning new (not popular I think) product when VS practically dominates market?
Thanks.

Answer 1

If you want to be 100% up-to-date, you have to use the development environment provided by the platform's vendor.

If you do not mind waiting few months/years for new things to get ported over (or your market allows for it) then you surely you can venture into the unknown.

It's not that Borland's IDEs (unlike MS' VS family) needed any advanced training to start using them and be already productive. That is the main reason why they remain popular in many niches.

Answer 2

I've been using both the Embarcadero Borland, now RAD Studio 2010, c++ and VS2008 every day for the last 6 months. My programming philosophy has always been to use the right tool for the project, no matter what that particular tool is. So a couple of my observations/opinions are -

Advantages

1. The WYSIWYG screen designer is good. It acts a lot like the WinForms editor in VS2008, but for c++. In VS2008, the only package for c++ that I've used that is close is Qt. My biggest compliant is documentation, but that applies to most software, so it isn't just their problem.
2. For many builtin classes, they are built on TObject class. This base class functions a lot like Object in C#. The biggest advantage this gives you as a c++ programmer, if you follow a few rules, is mostly automatic memory management. It's not garbage collection, rather, list of related objects that are deleted together.

Disadvantages-

1. The RAD Studio 2010 C++ environment exists primarily to support Delphi. That is their real strength anyway. Nowhere does anything say this. It is just an overall feel that I've gotten from using system.
2. Limited support for 3rd party libraries.
   1. It cannot link with any Microsoft compatible c++ library. This includes both Microsoft and 3rd party libraries. They use a different "name mangling" format from Microsoft. So everything has to wrapped in a c language wrapper.
   2. We use the Boost Libraries a lot in VS2008. But in Rad Studio, it only has limited support for Boost.
3. I've found the overall speed of the generated code to significantly slower than that produced by VS2008.

Please remember, that these are just one person's opinions.

I would suggest that you download a demo version of the product and try it for yourself.