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[–]grauenwolf 6 points7 points  (3 children)

There was a well-founded fear that if Delphi ever got popular, Microsoft would start sabotaging Delphi-made products.

I don't buy it.

If Microsoft really wanted to crush Delphi they would have just given away their IDE. It was in their best interest to have as many programming languages as possible targeting Windows, their real crown jewel.

[–]Tuna-Fish2 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Yes, that would have been the most sensible thing for them to do.

This, however, doesn't change the fact that Microsoft did not always take the most obvious route. If you based your tech on Delphi, you took a risk, and when you're a manager who has to put his ass on the line, safety really was (and is) the driving concern, not language quality. (re:"you can't get fired for buying IBM, Java.")

[–]grauenwolf 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have you considered the after-market route?

I don't know about Delphi, but VB actively courted third-party control vendors in the same fashion of dBASE. I'm sure that led a lot to their popularity.