Doug Swenson wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

MB>Indelible Blue, (800)776-8284, is still doing their
  >closeout special of Borland C++ 2.0 for OS/2, which is
  >current, for $99 with the hardcopy manuals.

 DS> That is an improvement, but I have seen complaints about 2.0
 DS> as well. Have you used it extensively?

No, I really only use it for OWL programming.  If OWL would compile under
Watcom, I think I would never have cause to run the Borland compiler.

 DS> Below is just one of the complaints that I have seen:

 DS> Date: 11-08-95 (19:43)             Number: 4737
 DS> From: Jonathan de Boyne Pollard    Refer#: NONE
 DS>   To: All                           Recvd: NO
 DS> Subj: Borland Bashing                Conf: (6) Os2prog
 DS> ___---------------------------------------------------------
 DS> If anyone is interested, one of the consequences of the fact 
 DS> that Borland C++ 2.0 for OS/2 includes the OS/2 Developers' 
 DS> Toolkit 2.0 (where every other C++ compiler for OS/2 uses 
 DS> release 2.1 or 3.0) is that perfectly correct C++ programs may 
 DS> fail to compile.

 DS> One of the bugs in Toolkit 2.0, that was fixed in Toolkit 2.1, 
 DS> is the definition of the NULL macro in OS2DEF.H. When you are 
 DS> using C++, and you have included  before any other 
 DS> headers (as is common practice for some people), the macro is 
 DS> not defined correctly. 

JdeBP is right about this, but it is really a "newbie" issue. 
One would think that, having paid IBM to license the OS/2 Toolkit, Borland
would take the trouble to supply the most recent version.  At minimum,
Borland should provide a patch kit for this purpose and make it
downloadable, which is how Watcom handles things of this kind.  If you
subscribe to IBM DevCon, then you will have the latest OS/2 Toolkit and can
use it with Borland.  That is an annoyance, but it is not a fatal defect.

Borland has some good points going for it.  The compiler comes with source
code for the run-time library, which is still an extra cost option with
Watcom.  The OWL subsystem is actually fairly good.  The C++ implementation
is rather good, although not quite as up to date as Metaware.  Many
important C++ packages use Borland as their official home, most importantly
the Hewlett-Packard implementation of the Standard Template Library.
 
-- Mike


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