I do not completely agree with this scenario! Borland was a big company way before Delphi and Windows. Borland, during Dos days, had strong and interesting products: Turbo Pascal, Paradox, Borland C, another Spreadsheet-graphical data-base whose name Ive forgotten However, as a long tradition Borland tried now and then to pick some market-share from its competitors (which infuriate them see Lotus.) This is how they enter in the C/C++ market when they were so good with Turbo-Pascal. Then, the first big surprise I had from Borland was when suddenly it made a lot of noise (publicity) on the market with a stupid product named Sidekick (do you remember?) It had a calendar, meeting agenda, notes and a klingon game! With Paradox 7 they tried to revolutionize the window programming what they did, they destroy the so good Paradox for Dos with its macro scripting in something that would have been further so bad firstly from them and then for Corel. C/C++ was not exactly their market and they stepped on some nerves of Microsoft (thanks God, they did not tried Visual Basic!) Finally, Microsoft ripped them off of their best programmers and then they tried to come back as Inprise, of course a bad move trying to enter the server market: by that time, Delphi was the perfect tool for the lonely-rider programmer, and my company was very pleased to have me as their only programmer dealing with and solving all their programming needs. Suddenly, I had to start talking about servers, Corba, administration etc. that that did not pleased neither my manager, nor me. You are wrong about not releasing too often. For me it was a good thing, both before Turbo-Pascal 7 and Delphi 6. In fact Delphi 5 was such a good release (including its two service packs) because I could use it for so many years (I fact, I still like to use Delphi 5!) During those three years of glory of Delphi 5 I have developed about 100 VLC components, and my programs filled every need of my company. When Delphi 6 come, not only my VLC did not compile without translating new unit names (including the hassle with the PropertyEditor issue,) but neither freeware package (like Rx) were not yet available in translated format. And then, a couple of months later: Delphi 7 come! Delphi 8, 10, 2000 etc I did not care anymore! Theirs huge price for included UML, TeamWork (I wish it was cheaper ) and the .Net approach with the bad help in the mean time I have switched to .Net and C#, which does not make me much happy either No in spite of Borlands excellent professionals, Borland was never too committed to its customers, to us the programmers.
Horia ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Peter Luijer Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2005 2:18 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [delphi-en] Delphi Q&A - Is Borland committed to Delphi? The thing that bothers me is the prices they ask for their products nowadays (at least since they change from Borland to Inprise to Borland). The reason is simple: in the beginning (the original) Borland was a small company with highly enthousiastic programmers, most of them didn't even have an IT-like degree, but were just simple *nerds* (gosh I hate that word!) that just wanted to make a good product, nothing more. Because of the computer-business BOOM, they also wanted a piece of the "action" (like other rags-to-riches companies like Microsoft) and "big" people with masters-degrees in economics were hired to make the business more profitable. Result: deadlines, sales, high salaries, shareholders, you name it... All the things you don't want if you want quality. So one day, some hot-shot director decided that, in order to be taken seriously, a name-change should be made, because "Borland" still had the name of being a "programmers-club" instead of a large corporation. Well, obviously, that didn't pay off, so they changed it back to Borland, but only the name... not the quality (you're not going to fire yourself as a managing director, are you?). The big problem is that, as large companies always want, they only want to focus on the market where the real money is, ie. other big companies. They don't care about little developers anymore (like in the past). Sure, you're able to get yourself a "Personal" edition, with everything stripped out and only under very strict conditions (read deployment.txt). As a hobby-programmer, I can't afford those prices they ask for their products, so I'm still "happy" with my Delphi 3 Pro and my second hand Delphi 6 Enterprise. I don't care about .NET: I hate system-bloating and prefer pure programming so I don't need Delphi 8/2005, but please give me updates for my (older) Delphi-versions. I won't go on any further, because I have a lot more things I don't like, but I still love Delphi and want to continue using it, but for how long? Greetz, Peter. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get Bzzzy! (real tools to help you find a job). Welcome to the Sweet Life. http://us.click.yahoo.com/A77XvD/vlQLAA/TtwFAA/i7folB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ----------------------------------------------------- Home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/delphi-en/ To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/delphi-en/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
