Signs JBuilder is on the way out

Eclipse, the emerging de facto standard in Java IDEs, is everywhere at the moment, with EclipseCon 2005 having recently wrapped in Burlingame, California.

JavaLobby just sent out its report on the conference to its email list. As a JBuilder user, one of the big bits of news was that Borland is breaking its long-held independence on the Java IDE front and will be porting some of the best features of JBuilder to Eclipse.

But what does this mean for JBuilder?

When it comes to the future of JBuilder, I was not able to get a definite answer. When I asked if Borland would continue to support JBuilder, I was told “for the foreseeable future”. When I asked how long that was, I was told “about a year”. When I asked if that meant that Borland was in fact, planning to phase out JBuilder eventually, I was given the “I can’t comment on that but customer demand will play a roll” answer. So my impression is that Borland is definitely considering phasing out JBuilder.