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发信人: Bob (Dinosaur), 信区: CompExpress
标题: The one that killed the company was Windows 3.x
发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Sat May 2 06:28:24 1998)

James W. Hanon
Friday May 01, 1998
Occupation: DBA AND COMPUTER CONSULTANT
Location: SAN ANTONIO TX

Borland may be guilty of any number of missteps over the years, but,
the bigggest problem thye had, the one that killed the company, was
Windows 3.x.

Borland was the king of DOS development tools. They had the best
development environments, arguably the best compilers, and then came
Windows 3.0.

Does anyone remember how no company, especially Borland, could come up
with a compiler for Windows programs? Yet, Microsoft had QuickC for
Windows, the Visual C? I can't recall whether Visual C came before or
after other non-Microsoft Windows-based compilers got onto the market,
but, the damage was done.

Microsoft had withheld documentation of two key API functions which
were required in order to compile a program for Windows. My
recollection is that when the other tools companies finally reverse
engineered software and found these two functions, Microsoft finally
documented them, allowing the other to create Windows compilers.

By that time, though, Microsoft had such a lead that it couldn't be
overcome. And some of the first questions about splitting Microsoft's
OS and Applciations divisions were born.

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