HI all,
I found this article by Charlie Calvert and thought it appropriate to share with
everyone.
Kindest Regards
Gary
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Charlie Calvert talks about Delphi's future
Reprinted with the kind permission of Charlie Calvert
The general feeling around Borland at this time is one of tremendous rebirth
and
excitement. The recent creation of borland.com as a developer tools and web
based
company bodes very well for Delphi's future.
Over the next few weeks, you ought to keep an eye on www.borland.com, so you
can
see the shape of the newly restructured company as it emerges as a key
developer site
on the web.
I also think its worth pointing out that Delphi is currently the best general
purpose
development tool on the market, which it has been consistently since the day it
was first
introduced. There is simply no
reason at all to assume that a tool this powerful, this successful, and this
prominent in
the industry "has seen its best days."
One point that people often forget is that Delphi is really just a Pascal
compiler. Pascal
has been one of the premier development languages since that late sixties, and
Turbo
Pascal, and then Delphi, has been the most used, and most sophisticated
expression of
the Pascal language since the early eighties. This tool has tremendous
longevity behind
it, and the reason for that is simply the tremendous dedication of the
developers who
use the product. When given a choice, hundreds of thousands of developers say
they
want to use Delphi. Nothing is going to change that scenario any time soon, so
there is
no reason to worry about the future of Delphi.
Indeed, as I said in the first paragraph, this is a particularly good time for
Delphi, and
morale on the team and here in Developer Relations is high.
-------
I agree that the struggle has a lot to do with market conditions, but I
disagree that it is
useless simply to promote the product and its strengths.
In my opinion simply having a great tool with great strengths is indeed an
important part
of the formula for success. The marketing has to be there too, but having the
tool is a
significant step in the right direction! :) For the rest, I would have to let
marketing and
product management step in to
give the other side of the picture, which in Delphi's case is pretty sunny.
Its a successful tool that sells well.
Fighting against Microsoft is tough, but the developer market tends to have an
independent streak, and we are the only real competition that MS has in this
field. I'm
not the guy to give you all the numbers, but the numbers definitely support
that position.
There are no other tool venders that have a significant ability to compete with
MS in the
tools market other than Borland. MS knows that, and given their troubles in DC,
they
certainly don't want us to disappear. We are plus to them.
My point is simply that there are certain number of developers who are not
going to
want to go with the MS solution, and Borland is the only real choice that they
have right
now. I'm not happy about that, I wish the market was more open, but given the
reality,
people really have little choice but either Microsoft or Borland, and a certain
percentage
of them will continue to choose Borland so long as we continue to produce
superior
products like Delphi. And I promise you that we will continue to produce Delphi
and
other great tools and we are dedicated to keeping the quality high. That means
we
should continue to have a strong, though not necessarily dominant, future
in the developer tools market into the indefinite future.
Once again, I'm not the person to give you the numbers, but I can say that the
Delphi
numbers are good. And certainly JBuilder is a growing product that would seem
to have
a great future in front of it. CBuilder is another excellent tool, and it is
successful,
though I think it deserves a bigger chunk of the market than it has right now.
Maybe
that will improve when people see the new version, CBuilder 4, which is now out
and
which looks great. In general, though, Borland is a company with strong tools
and
secure niche in the developer market place.
I would love to see us get dominance in the developer tools market, and
certainly we
deserve to have a dominant position there, and I think that it is possible for
us to do so.
But even if we don't, we still have a strong future.
-----------------
I disagree that there is an identity crisis here. Borland.com is the perfect
way to present
Delphi, CBuilder and JBuilder to the world. The attempt to develop enterprise
tools
through Inprise is a good idea, and I think it will grow into a successful
business.
However, the emphasis on Enterprise
development did not serve all aspects of the Delphi, CBuilder and JBuilder
development
communities. Inprise was great for a part of the Delphi, JBuilder and CBuilder
markets,
but not for the whole market. Only a company focused on developer tools can
properly
address the needs of the Delphi, JBuilder and CBuilder development communities.
So
that's what we have -- Borland.com -- a company dedicated to the needs of
developers.
Its not an identity crisis, its not a financial crisis, its simply the right
solution
to a particular problem.
I personally am very excited about this development, and so are most of the
people I
talk to. This is just the right thing to do. Let the enterprise guys go off and
be
enterprisers, and let the development tools people pursue the development tools
market.
Its the right decision for everyone, and particularly great news for the
development
community.
-----------------
For the last two to three years, Borland/Inprise has been focused primarily,
and at times
exclusively, on distributed computing. During this time we have developed
distributed
computing solutions for JBuilder, Delphi and CBuilder.
Each group thinks that their language is the best way to create distributed
applications,
but the truth is that they all work well.
I think it is obvious that JBuilder has a special place in distributing
computing that is
different from the world of Delphi development. Clearly, Java, JScript,
servelets, EJB,
and so on, play an important role in a certain kind of development. On the
other hand,
there is a certain kind of distributed computing for which DCOM or CORBA are
the
right solution. In those areas, Delphi and CBuilder can be used to create very
powerful
distributed applications and application servers.
If you want to build applications servers, then you can achieve your goals with
DCOM
or CORBA, and can choose the development environment that best suits your needs
and tastes. C++ and Java are cross platform tools, which is great, but for many
Windows developers, Delphi can be used to create very
powerful distributed applications. All three tools work well in this realm of
computer
science.
My point is that distributed computing is not a domain owned by Java. Java has
a part to
play in that realm, but Delphi and CBuilder have also produced extremely
powerful
distributed computing solutions. There is nothing at all second class about a
distributed
computing environment built in C++ rather
than Java, and if you are working on Windows, Delphi probably does the job of
creating
distributed applications better than any other tool.
And certainly you can mix your tools if you want. You can have a JBuilder
application
that participates in distributed applications environments along with Delphi
and C++.
One of the key points of CORBA and DCOM are that they are language neutral
solutions. Borland lets you easily bridge the gap
between these environments with MIDAS, which works on all three platforms to
help
you built cross platform distributed environments.
When you first come into this world, its easy to think that it is dominated by
one
particular technology. Say Java and JNI. Or C++ and CORBA. Or Delphi and DCOM.
Or maybe it is ISAPI and CGI that interest you. However, when you explore the
world
in more depth, you see that all of these solutions are valuable, and that no
one
distributed solution owns the future of this fast growing market. The likely
result will be
that distributed computing will be built with all three languages, and with
some VB
thrown in for good measure.
In other words, the tools market will continue as it has always been.
When Windows first came out, everyone said that C++ was the only way to program
Windows. That was an interesting point of view. Not very prophetic, but
interesting.
Now that distributed computing is a big splash, some folks think Java is the
only way to
do it. That's an interesting opinion, but we will have to wait and see if it is
true.
------------------
I can't promise you the world, but I believe that things will be much better
than they
have been over the last year.
At this stage, one of our biggest goals is to get a lot of technical content up
on the web.
We want to get information on the web so that everyone can easily find answers
to a
wide range of questions.
Letting developers talk directly to the R&D team on a regular basis is probably
not a
productive move, since R&D's time is best spent developing the product itself.
On the
other hand, I think it would be good if we can make the team a bit more
visible, and
there is some hope that that can happen, though no guarantees at this time.
I think it is important to understand that Borland does not have the resources
of a
company like Microsoft, so you can not always expect us to add all the
peripheral
features that they might supply. On the other hand, we can compete with them on
a
purely technical basis, in terms of the excellence of our products. So you can
expect to
see Delphi continue to be the leading Windows development tool for those who
care
about technical excellence, ease of use, correct implementations of OOP, and
leading
edge features such as distributed programming.
Personally, my time is divided between the various tasks which are part of my
job here
at Borland, my books, and generating content for the web. This year I would
like to
write only one book, thereby giving myself more time to generate content for
the web.
This is one of the biggest ways I think I can
contribute to the product. This falls in line with the general outlook here at
Borland,
where we want to continue creating and marketing great products, but add more
strength to our technical support on the web.
In general, there is no reason to worry about Delphi's future. Delphi is a very
successful
product that makes lots of money for Borland/Inprise. As a result, we would be
foolish
to give it up, and have no plans to give it up, and currently in the process of
building
Delphi 5.
- Charlie Calvert
Borland Developer Relations
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