As I have already said everything I can on this subject and I'm
beginning to get redundant, this will be my last post on the topic. I'll
keep an eye on it though and if something new or different is said that I
feel strongly about I may still offer a quick reply!
It's been nearly three years now since I first started to feel as if
Borland was letting me down, and it has also been that long since I first
began doing research on alternatives and .NET as well! Since that day I
have read everything I could find on these two interrelated topics no matter
who the author was or what company might be sponsoring them. In the last
couple of weeks alone however, I have read almost an equal amount! In fact
just yesterday I read over 150 separate blog entries made by various members
of the programming communities that had anything to say on these topics!
As decisions go, this one took longer than any I can ever remember
having taken before, and that includes some really important considerations
like whether or not to ask someone to marry me and what names to give my
children and dog! But this decision has been a lot tougher to make so I
gave it all the time it required!
Also, for me, the timing was just right at the moment. My web site,
after having been miss-managed by the company that took over from TechSoft
was shut down, and a new one is in the works. All my work that had been
lined up is now finished, and I vowed not to take any new work until I made
a decision either way! Borland laid out their roadmap for the next
versions, and I simply wasn't impressed. Unfortunately, nothing that anyone
has said in the last two years has made me think that I might get away
without learning .NET to stay current! All of these things and more came
together during this same two week period, and if that's not a sign from the
Gods then Solomon's Song, ( from the Bible ), isn't one of the most erotic
poems ever written either!
Of course there really was a lot to take under consideration, like
the fact I had never coded in any other IDE than Delphi's and no other
language but Pascal! The advantages and disadvantages of .NET. The loyalty
I had given Borland for so long. The kinds of applications I wanted to get
into in the near future. The differences in community. The availability of
library code and components. The fact that Microsoft has already stated
publicly that within the next couple years .NET will outperform Win32 in
every way! And so much more!
But when I finally added up all these considerations, and subtracted
those that could only be determined speculatively, I ended up with a very
lopsided equation! And as you may have already suspected, the decision I
finally came to...the same one that wouldn't allow me sleep and so I'm up
and writing this at 5:00 am, was to start embracing .NET full-time using the
best tools I was able to find and could afford, while at the same time
suspending any work except upgrades and/or fixes using Delphi!
This decision, as right as I now think it is, has also caused some
major problems for me. A pet project of mine that has been released only as
a series of beta trials had finally matured enough that I announced to my
beta testers, of which there are now 147 active participants, a tentative
1st candidate release before the end of the year. And in fact I had just
about signed off on this next release and was hard at work on the
documentation for it! But considering everything else, including some
similar abilities Microsoft has announced for it's next OS version, I also
had to make a decision on whether or not I should re-design it as a local
Web Application that could hook up on demand to a web server, or leave it be
as the straight Win32 desktop application that it currently is! Well I
made that decision too, opting to re-design it now instead of risking it
might get a bad name for not offering enough difference in it's abilities
over what Microsoft now intends to give away. Besides, I've been working on
it off and on for nearly eight years now so what's another year?
All in all, I don't believe this will be a bad move. .NET does now
appear to be the future so it must be tackled, and Chrome will make that a
lot easier without any compromises! I will miss the VCL but, I've never
been into gambling much...and when I do I always play the odds! There are
an awful lot of programmers out there NOT using the VCL, and so I have to
ask myself if the VCL really is so much better than any other solution,
similar or not, wouldn't Delphi's fan base be twice or ten times the size it
is now? I certainly have no way to judge as I've never used anything else,
but in any event, it can't be wrong to want to find out! I'm not throwing
Delphi in the trash, so I can always return to it if and when I want! I
never write ANYTHING in stone! But for the next couple of months at least,
I plan on doing little else but study .NET, get used to the new
environments, and see just what I can or cannot do with this still
relatively new technology.
This does NOT mean I won't continue helping out on the Delphi Lists,
or that I'll stop answering those questions I can. What it DOES mean
however is that I won't be asking as many questions here as I used to, and
I may have to stay out of many of the great debates we've all enjoyed...on
this List in particular!
Someone had asked about adding a Chrome list here. The more I
consider this the less I like the idea, but as I said, it's not up to me
either way. I believe however that by doing so it would further dilute the
others, which I must admit are only getting a portion of the play that they
used to! I'm going to talk to Marc from RemObjects to see if he might want
to sponsor such a list. They are already very active on their newsgroups,
but I realize many people prefer this format, so if possible I'll get one
going somehow and let everyone know.
In the meantime I wanted to say thanks to everyone associated with
these Lists who have provided me with the kind and amount of help I never
could have found elsewhere. It means more than you may imagine to be taken
in as a complete novice and helped over the years to where I can actually
call myself a programmer! I'm not kidding myself, as I know all too well
that I'm not near the level of most of you, but that just makes it all the
more gratifying to me that programmers of your caliber took so much of your
valuable time to get me over the humps!
Any of you have an open invitation for dinner and a bed when you're in the
Harrisburg, Pa. area!
Here's hoping Borland gets their act together soon!
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
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