A few days ago was launched the biggest, most experienced, development tools company to be created since the dot-com era. A company that's explicitly turning away from managerial buzzwords in order to concentrate on language implementations, libraries, and tool-chains that will cross platforms. The company includes people who developed some of the world's fastest-working compilers, most famously productive environments, and pretty much invented the models for software components that dominate software development today. The way in which the company was launched is controversial, with a very public reversal of a very public plan. To me, it seems like a big deal.
How did Slashdot, Techmeme, Lambda the Ultimate, and the blogosphere in general react to this launch?
Almost complete silence.
I don't get it; I really don't.
It's not like I'm the world's biggest fan of Delphi and I don't get why the world doesn't share my enthusiasm. What I don't get is why there's so much more blogospheric coverage of Sun's choice of license for open sourcing Java compared to CodeGear. Heck, there's more blogospheric coverage of the latest mapping "mashup" than there is of CodeGear.
CodeGear seems like a big deal to me. Yeah, Borland's languages division has been neglected and lost status. Yeah, Borland's decision not to sell raises huge questions about commitment and investment, but I don't think the meaning of it all is so obvious that it doesn't bear comment and discussion.
Perhaps I'm just of a certain age and am assigning to CodeGear a weight they no longer deserve; perhaps the blogosphere's collective "meh" is an indication that people have no more faith in the former Borland division than they would in any other startup.
Time will tell. I expect fireworks from Scotts Valley -- for better or worse.