I guess you're right about the Loyalty thing. It has more to do
more with "familiarity breeding contempt for others" than it does any valid
reasoning or expectations! I've heard and even said the same myself, for
example, the original reason I chose Delphi as the language I was going to
learn with had absolutely nothing to do with anyone's reputation or anything
another programmer told me because I was a complete newbie all the way! For
me it was simply spending one night in a Santa Barbara classroom for a
course on learning how to program with Visual Basic! Microsoft was and
still is the Holy Grail of the PC world to the uninitiated, so I had no
reason to even consider anything else! So the teacher wanted to find out
how much each of us knew, because there were many like myself and more than
a few that were already working as coders in other languages. What
surprised me was that out of all of us that night I was the only one that
seemed to know anything! <g> He asked us to sit down at the networked VB
installation and write a simple calculator that could merely add and
subtract whole numbers. And as a guide there was a completely different but
equally basic project online that we could look at for syntax help. I was
the only one to figure out that it was an event driven system and so I hard
coded to methods to two buttonclicks where one added 1 and 1 and the other
subtracted 1 from 1! It was great! But then the word "Dim" came up a
little later that same evening, and for some reason that word simply choked
me! That's when the teacher told me about Pascal and the very 1st edition
of Delphi Personal that was available for only 79 dollars. Pascal he said,
is very literal!
And Pascal certainly is! That is one of the big reasons I didn't
jump into NET when it was first announced, and also why I continued putting
my faith in Borland so long after I already knew better! Pascal is much
more unforgiving...meaning it doesn't tolerate the kinds of mistakes that
many other languages do! So for a beginner in ANY new code technology it is
simply one of the best choices!
I heard about the Chrome Project about a year ago, before their
first release. And as promising as it looked for enabling a Pascal coder to
get into .NET using a familiar language, I didn't want to jump on it until
it was proven! Well it has been, and is as highly regarded for it's
innovative additions to the language and it's absolute compliance to .NET as
Delphi was back in 92! And a couple of things I forgot to add when I
replied to Rob yesterday:
Microsoft really does know how to treat their partners and friends!
Unlike Borland who had the absurd gall to give Mark Miller a Delphi award
for his work on CodeRush while at the same exact time making it impossible
for him to continue making it what it was planned to be due to their
unwillingness to sit down and provide him with the information needed!
That's not only absurd, it's cruel! On the other hand, Marc of RemObjects
and his team just spent a week as guests of Microsoft in order to allow them
to more fully integrate Chrome with .NET 2.00 and VS 2005!
I forgot to mention Chrome's new Case statements as well. These are
an absolute wonder! Allowing you to write Case statement using almost
anything from strings to objects!
How about .NET's built-in and immediately accessible error
information? It will automatically send to CodeSite or another logger all
the data you could ever want about a tricky error or AV, including a full
list of every event leading up to it and line numbers both in the clr and
your own source! And if you listen really good to those in the know, all of
them are saying that .NET will soon overtake Win32 in all ways, just as
Win32 did over Win16, and Win16 did over DOS!
People mention the RTTI and the VCL as being so innovative. Sure it
was almost 15 years ago! But I've never directly made use of the RTTI, and
the VCL is neither thread safe or able to be made .NET useable! That's why
Borland is now again talking about a whole nuther VCL just for .NET! But
I've heard nothing from them to make me believe it will ever be or ever
could be 100% compliant!
And speaking of the need for compliancy, I have to wonder how many
Delphinians have actually tried to work with Delphi .NET? Well I did! I
bought the big Delphi .NET textbook, in my attempts to understand it but the
problem is that it always refers you back to Microsoft's documentation
again, and if you think life is tough don't even attempt trying to wrap your
head around some understanding of how these two different incarnations are
supposed to work together! It's like trying to translate a translation of a
translation! <g> In their attempts to make the transition from Win32 to
.NET, Borland has simply made the entire process more difficult to
understand or use!
I can easily understand Cosmin's situation. Anytime you put more
than one person on any kind of work you no longer have the right to justify
based upon your own needs or thoughts. And were I in that same position as
he I certainly wouldn't make any moves until they seemed to becoming
necessary! He's in a rather luxurious position being able to turn work
away. I too turn away a lot of work but for a completely different set of
reasons. Usually because it requires some skill set that I don't have yet
and which they will not give me enough time to research properly, or because
I'm busy on some other pro-bono job, and being but one man I cannot take on
more than one job at a time! But I suspect even his situation will change
before much longer. People in the States may generally be uninformed and
ignorant of the rest of the world around them, but usually when it comes to
their businesses they're quite smart! I don't believe I've been to a
client, paying or otherwise, in the last year and a half who hasn't asked me
about .NET! In most cases they already have an opinion right or wrong based
upon the press they've heard or read. But one thing about Americans is that
they almost always want to stay on the cutting edge, even when they don't
know anything about it! And they'll pay thru the nose to keep up too!
Though I don't charge much even when I do occasionally work for money, I
consider it my responsibility to satisfy their wants and needs when ever
possible. It's the way my father taught me to deal with customers, and even
though we've both been burned, and burned badly, by some of the same people
we've tried to help, if Earth-bound reality truly is the reformatory as
described by Christianity and heaven or hell the everlasting penitentiary,
then I'll just keep on turning the other cheek! Just in case you
understand! <g>
from: Robert Meek at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
dba "Tangentals Design" home of "PoBoy"
freeware Windows apps and utilities
located at: www.TangentalsDesign.com
Proud to be a moderator for the
"Delphi Programming Lists" at: elists.org
Robert, the loyalty you mention is generally from people who are comfortable
with what they are using and are afraid to make the change. Or have spent a
lot of time learning a language and don't want to learn another. Maybe have
invested a lot of money on 3rd party components.
On this list we have heard people saying VS is crap, VB is crap, and C #is
crap. I imagine these people have spent less than 5 minutes on those
platforms.
Then again, VB, C#, Java users will say Delphi is crap and most likely they
saw Delphi at a trade show and have never used it. People will continually
bag the other compilers, it appears to be developer human nature.
People are generally happy with what they are used to. However, we must also
look at who pays for the products. a user can buy their own copy or steal it
from the company they work for. There are very few users on this list who
have the Enterprise edition. If they did, there would be a flood of
complaints about costs of upgrades. When looking at value for money, then MS
has to win. You get what you pay for and more.
In the case of Borland, you generally pay a premium price for an annual
upgrade to new version, whereas MS upgrades once every 3 to 4 years. With
Borland you can be assured that the first version doesn't work, the first
update fixes 360 bugs in the first version, the 2nd update fixes all the
problems that update one generated and update 3 is usually stable. When the
3rd update is released, Borland are planning the next version update. By the
time Borland has reached Delphi 2011, MS will have release VS 2007 - they
usually skip a version.
In this thread it seems most are content with D5 or D7, use the professional
version and don't really want to upgrade. I don't blame them, the stuff on
D2005 that came through turned me off another upgrade. Those that I know
that did upgrade have all gone back to their previous version.
In my case, I have always used the Enterprise version of Delphi and
Enterprise Architect of VS because of the nature of my development work. The
cost for me to upgrade Delphi is significant compared to any upgrades to VS.
In VS, I get all their compilers and get value for money.
Incidentally, in the country that I live in, more company's are moving to
the .NET environment and insist that the development be done in either VB or
C#. Therefore if you want work, you have to at least know one of those
languages. Delphi is not an option. Then again, there have been a lot of ads
for Delphi programmers that are not being filled as there aren't many around
now. Interesting where they have all gone.
If you are a developer for the corporate sector, they prefer the MS
development environment. They have deals with MS, the IT staff are MS savvy,
they want internal staff to support the developed application.
I you are a hobbyist or do small scale development, then of course Delphi
will be your preferred environment. If you want to make heaps of bucks, then
you should add a MS language to your arsenal.
Mike
__________________________________________________
Delphi-Talk mailing list -> [email protected]
http://www.elists.org/mailman/listinfo/delphi-talk
