Borland: Turbo Pascal, Delphi and the history of a great engineering company
The story of how a focus on development speed and developer experience brought Borland to the forefront, but loss of focus and strategic confusion led to decline.
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Video about Borland
The story of Borland's rise and fall: Turbo Pascal, Delphi and strategic forks.
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Who and why is it important?
At the center of the Borland story are Philip Kahn and Anders Hejlsberg. Their focus on compilation speed, seamless workflow, and accessibility of tools has actually shaped what developers expect from IDEs for decades.
Turbo Pascal and Delphi have shown that you can win in the market not only through marketing and the platform, but also through the engineering quality of the product, which really speeds up the programmer's work.
Timeline Borland
Founding a company and focusing on development speed
The company starts as Market In Time, then Borland is formed. Philip Kahn comes to the management and sets the main vector: to give developers a fast and convenient “code → compile → run” cycle.
Turbo Pascal: the product that revolutionized the market
Turbo Pascal comes out with the idea of an all-in-one IDE and a very low price. Compiling in seconds and being accessible to a mass audience makes the product a hit.
Expansion of the Turbo line and rapid growth
Borland is developing an ecosystem of tools (Turbo C, Turbo Assembler, etc.), strengthening its brand among developers and demonstrating that the convenience of an IDE can be a competitive advantage.
Entering databases and increasing organizational complexity
The acquisitions of Paradox and Ashton-Tate expand the company's ambitions, but also increase operational complexity and conflicting product strategies.
Failed attempt to switch to Windows
ObjectVision does not meet market expectations: the product is perceived as limited and expensive. The community needs a stronger response to the industry's move to GUI.
Secret Delphi development and new Borland peak
Borland begins developing a new tool for Windows, and Delphi 1.0 is released in 1995. The RAD approach, visual form designer and compiled Object Pascal return Borland to the forefront of development tools.
Personnel change and change of strategy
After the departure of Philip Kahn and Anders Hejlsberg, the company is losing strategic momentum. The pricing model is changing, the mass audience is narrowing.
Pivot in ALM and the fight for relevance
Borland focuses on ALM, and the IDE direction loses priority. With the growth of .NET and Visual Studio, Delphi's influence is gradually declining.
Denouement: CodeGear, sale of IDE and end of independent Borland
Development tools are allocated to CodeGear and sold by Embarcadero. Borland is later absorbed by Micro Focus, ending the era of the independent company.
Embarcadero era: Delphi and RAD Studio live on
After the deal with CodeGear, the line is developing under the Embarcadero brand: RAD Studio XE/XE2/XE3 and subsequent versions are released, the platform receives a new release cycle and expands its cross-platform focus.
New owner of the IDE direction: Idera
Idera announces the acquisition of Embarcadero in October 2015 and strengthens its focus on developer tools. The Embarcadero brand remains, and Delphi/RAD Studio remains the core of the product line.
ALM legacy of Borland goes into the OpenText circuit
OpenText closes the deal to purchase Micro Focus (January 31, 2023), and the corporate branch, which previously included Borland, finally becomes part of the larger enterprise portfolio.
The modern stage of Delphi/RAD Studio
RAD Studio 12 Athens (November 2023) and RAD Studio 13 Florence (September 2025) are coming out. This shows that Borland's engineering pipeline through Delphi is still going strong decades later.
Key Findings
- Leadership vision and product focus make the difference: Borland grew as long as the strategy was clear and developer-focused.
- Affordable price + strong DX can give explosive growth faster than expensive enterprise positioning.
- Ecosystem development and community support are no less important than the product features themselves.
- Spreading across too different markets (IDE, DB, ALM, office software) increases the risk of strategic drift.
- Retention of key people and continuity of engineering leadership is critical.
- When competing with a platform holder, clear differentiation is needed, otherwise the platform ecosystem will absorb the product.
- Breaking backward compatibility and frequent roadmap reversals quickly erode user trust.
What does this mean for CTOs and tech leads?
- Keep your product strategy stable: changes in direction should be rare and well explained.
- Invest in developer experience as a business metric, not as a “nice bonus.”
- Protect the core of the business: expand into related areas only when the core product is strong.
- Plan platform evolution with backward compatibility and migration paths in mind.