Get ready for Kylix!

By J.D. Hildebrand

Are you up-to-date on Inprise's Kylix project? You should be. In my view <insert disclaimer here about how this is my own opinion, not necessarily the opinion of Inprise Corporation, its staff or management, etc., etc.> Kylix is the most important initiative in Inprise/Borland's 15-year history.

"Kylix," as I'm sure you know, is the name for a variety of shallow wine bowl found in ancient Greece. Kylikes are distinguished from other wine bowls by the presence of horizontal handles at opposite sides of the top bowl, plus a long stem attaching the bowl to the foot...just the sort of vessel you might drink wine from if you were traveling in Delphi. (Here is the image of a kylix you can see today in the archaeological museum of Delphi.)

The Kylix initiative was officially launched on 28 September when Inprise/Borland issued a news release describing the product as "a high-performance Linux application-development environment that will support C, C++, and Delphi development." Kylix is intended to be the first high-performance RAD tool for Linux.

More details from the release:

Project Kylix is currently planned to be a Linux component-based development environment for two-way visual development of...GUI, Internet, database, and server applications. Plans are for Project Kylix to be powered by a new high-speed native C/C++/Delphi compiler for Linux and will implement a Linux version of the Borland Visual Component Library architecture. The Borland VCL for Linux will be designed to radically speed native Linux application development and simplify the porting of Delphi and C++Builder applications between Windows and Linux.

Get it? Kylix is nothing more nor less than Delphi and C++Builder for Linux. The whole IDE. The tools you count on. The VCLs you've written and bought. The works.

What Linux needs

All of this talk of Kylix reminds me of the early days of Windows programming. Remember a decade ago, when Windows 3.0 was released and the only way to write Windows programs was to work your way laboriously through Petzold and grapple with the C-based API barehanded? The difficulty of writing Windows applications slowed the adoption of Windows.

One product changed all that: Visual Basic. Snicker if you want, but it was the right product at exactly the right time. (In fact, the pre-beta code name of Visual Basic 1.0 was "Thunder" -- as in "Windows 3.0 was the lightning, VB is the thunderclap.") Visual Basic shielded programmers from the complexity of the GUI and memory management and tasking, and allowed them to focus on their work. It was the right tool to help a generation of busy programmers -- guys whose hands were full and couldn't stop to memorize Windows' C-based API -- make the move to Windows.

Years later, Borland released Delphi. From day one, Delphi was a better VB than VB. More efficient. More reusable. Better performance. Real OOP. And on and on. If you wanted to write Windows programs, Delphi was the right way to do it. (Then C++Builder got the Delphi IDE and VCL...but that's a story for another day.) The problem was that Delphi arrived too late. Developers who wanted to become Windows programmers had found another way. They had chosen Visual Basic or opted for Smalltalk or picked C++ with an application framework. If Delphi 1.0 and Visual Basic 1.0 had been released the same day...well, that's a dumb game to play. That's not the way it happened.

But it could happen now. There has been no indication that Microsoft or anyone else is going to create a kick-ass component-based, fully compiled, pure-OOP RAD tool for Linux. Except Kylix.

Kylix sets up Delphi to be the Visual Basic of Linux. The first RAD tool for the platform. Which means that it will blow the doors down and empower millions of programmers to create killer apps -- for the desktop, for the Internet, for servers. And which means that Inprise/Borland could sell a gazillion copies, riding its engineering strengths to the #1 spot in developer tools again.

Java and C++ are important. The ORB and application-server stuff that's built in Inprise/Borland's San Mateo-based enterprise-software office is essential. But the hot product -- the one that should get your blood pumping the way mine is, because you're just itching to get your hands on it -- the hot product is Kylix. Thunder? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

The teams are hard at work. They're committed to getting Kylix into your hands sooner rather than later. Watch this space.

An award-winning writer and editor, J.D. Hildebrand is the content director and editor-in-chief of Inprise's developer community.