Borland revives 'Turbo' for developer tools

Borland Software will bring back the Turbo product moniker on Tuesday with the introduction of language-specific developer tools.

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The Turbo name had been prominent as part of the company's Turbo Pascal product.  The Turbo revival features single-language versions of Borland Developer Studio, which is a development environment Microsoft Windows and .Net applications. The Turbo product set includes Turbo Delphi for Win32, Turbo Delphi for .Net, Turbo C++ and Turbo C#. The .Net and C# products support .Net and ASP.Net.

The Turbo products are being unveiled by the Developer Tools Group, which Borland intends to sell by September.

Versions will be available in two formats: A free, downloadable Turbo Explorer version for beginners, and the customizable Turbo Professional, which is designed to accommodate thousands of third-party tools, components and plug-ins.

With the new Turbo products, developers can build GUI, database, Web and Web services applications for Microsoft Windows.

Future Turbo products are expected to be released for other languages, such as now-popular scripting languages, when the tools group finds a new home, said Dave Intersimone, vice president of developer relations at Borland.

"These Turbo products are just the start of our developer focus," Intersimone said on Monday. A 21-year Borland employee, Intersimone will be moving to the new company once the tools unit is sold.

In a statement, Borland said Raize Software, which offers tools and components to integrate with Borland development platforms, cited the need for tools that accommodate developers who do not need all the features of Developer Studio.

“While the full-featured Developer Studio product is an excellent development environment, there are many developers that simply do not need all the frameworks and programming languages that are included,” said Ray Konopka, president of Raize, in the statement.  “Providing low-cost, single language/frameworks, the new Turbo editions are a clear indicator that the Developer Tools Group is focused on all developers, not just those in large corporate development shops."

The Turbo products will be generally available in September, Intersimone said. Pricing for the Professional products will be less than $500, the company said.