If you cut your teeth on Windows programming in the early 90s—using C, Turbo Pascal, or even Visual Basic—you remember the Resource Compiler dance.
For one brief moment, you’ll feel like a 1994 Windows wizard again. borland resource workshop
Then came . And for a generation of developers, it felt like magic. What Was Borland Resource Workshop? Released in the early 1990s as part of Borland’s C++ and Delphi ecosystems, Resource Workshop (often called RWS.EXE ) was a visual resource editor for 16-bit and 32-bit Windows applications (Windows 3.1 through Windows 95/NT). If you cut your teeth on Windows programming
By Windows XP, Microsoft’s own resource tools had won by default. Here’s the surprising part: I still run Borland Resource Workshop in 2026 . And for a generation of developers, it felt like magic
You wrote a .RC text file, compiled it with RC.EXE , and hoped the coordinates didn't overlap. It was functional, but it was blind.
