Overview
Borland is a software company. It is best known for creating tools for Turbo Pascal and Delphi software developers. Founded in 1981, the company has had a long history of development. Let’s look at its popular products and trace important stages together in our article.
A Brief History of Borland: Turbo Pascal
The Borland brand began with a small company in Ireland. They specialized in creating software for the CP/M operating system. Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, and Mogens Glad, founded Borland Ltd in August 1981. In 1983, the company changed its name to Borland International to enter the American market.
At that time, their main focus was on developing Turbo Pascal, an IDE for the Pascal programming language. The product became one of the most successful Pascal compilers. Alongside Turbo Pascal, they also launched Borland Pascal later on. Borland Pascal offered a broader range of enhanced features like program compilation modes. Throughout this period, Borland released a total of seven versions of Turbo and Borland Pascal.
A Road to Delphi
In the early 90s, Microsoft introduced Visual Basic. The new technology significantly changed application programming. All programming languages had to change their approaches to meet the new standard. For Borland, redesigning the software and integrating new features became a challenge.
They found a solution in developing a new technology — the Delphi programming language. Delphi software uses Object Pascal and an IDE for fast app development. The technology was very successful and became the company’s main product.
In 1998, the company focused on the corporate sector, changing its name to Inprise. But, in two years, Borland returned to its original name, Borland Software.
In March 2006, Borland stopped developing JBuilder, Delphi, and C++Builder. The area was unprofitable, so they decided to sell it. But soon, this decision was called off. Instead, IDE product development was handed over to Borland’s new division, CodeGear.
Embarcadero’s Delphi
Embarcadero Technologies has owned the CodeGear division since 2008. The new owner began working to improve these products. Since 2016, Embarcadero has been releasing constant updates to keep the software competitive. The latest version of the technology is Delphi 12.1.
The Borland company was acquired by Micro Focus in 2009. Although the company no longer exists, its legacy continues. Delphi nowadays is one of the most popular cross-platform development environments.
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