Dead end tools and technologies you wished you hadn't bothered with

[d000hg]

Delphi. About a thousand quid (special offer) for the full development license which allowed you to distribute the run time Interbase binaries.

I quite liked it, but the marketplace didn't.

Yeah, I don't really know why Delphi died. It was like VB but done properly, good for throwing together visual apps IIRC. Showing my age (or lack thereof), the only time I used Delphi was at school.

[OwlHoot]

Delphi. About a thousand quid (special offer) for the full development license which allowed you to distribute the run time Interbase binaries.

I quite liked it, but the marketplace didn't.

It's still going strong though isn't it? Well, maybe not strong, but I see jobserve ads for it now and then. They could all be for porting work though, or maintaining legacy code.

[Zippy]

Lotus Notes

[Sysman]

I dont know about nowardays but BigBlue was once the biggest Publishers in the World.

I'd forgotten that. The documentation updates alone kept our secretary busy for at least one morning a week.

[bogeyman]

IBM Assembler - its just so old fashioned these days, having to load accumulators etc its so bothersome.

Oh and VSAM Macros - that was a waste of time .

My advice - just stick with what you know - thats more than enough,

Accumulators?

The s3x0 architecture has 16 General Purpose Registers, 16 Control Registers, 16 Floating Point Registers, and various 'status words'.

It has no 'accumulator'. No wonder you found it bothersome.

[DimPrawn]

Accumulators?

The s3x0 architecture has 16 General Purpose Registers, 16 Control Registers, 16 Floating Point Registers, and various 'status words'.

It has no 'accumulator'. No wonder you found it bothersome.

Do you smoke a pipe sir?

[bogeyman]

I'd forgotten that. The documentation updates alone kept our secretary busy for at least one morning a week.

You had a secretary to do it? Lucky bastard

Wherever I worked it fell to the sysprogs (i.e. my lot)

[bogeyman]

Do you smoke a pipe sir?

Yes! and furthermore, I own a narrow boat.

[Sysman]

Yeah, I don't really know why Delphi died. It was like VB but done properly, good for throwing together visual apps IIRC. Showing my age (or lack thereof), the only time I used Delphi was at school.

I've got vague memories of Borland somehow losing the plot, but I couldn't work out why. The same happened later with WordPerfect Office; that came with a PC I bought in 1999 and at there was supposedly a Linux version. When I tried to buy the Linux version it had been mysteriously discontinued. Either it didn't work or sales failed to materialise, again I don't know the real reason.

It's still going strong though isn't it? Well, maybe not strong, but I see jobserve ads for it now and then. They could all be for porting work though, or maintaining legacy code.

That was the problem. I didn't see enough regular ads for Delphi skills, and a juicy contract doing other stuff came up.

[mace]

.Net
Java
Oracle
C++
Prince2
English

All totally useless in this market